LSE student wins trading game with buy-and-hold strategy

Ekelund picked five stocks at the start and did no trading at all during the eight-week game, unlike many of his 1,826 rivals. His choices were Impax Group, Cable & Wireless, Oxus Mining,

Oxford Instruments and CybIT Holdings.

He said: "My strategy was to pick small, risky stocks (with the exception of Cable & Wireless) within different sectors that were either very volatile or thinly traded."

"Some of them had such large bid-ask spreads that it didn't make sense to sell them off." Ekelund said big increases in the value of Oxus, a gold mining company, and CybIT, a computer technology company, propelled him to victory.

Paul Heslop of London Business School was in second place with a 13.58% increase, while

Ben Hammond of the LSE was third with 12.04%.

The game, open only to students, attracted entrants from the Sorbonne and Harvard as well as dozens of UK universities. Each started with a notional 50,000 and played via the eFinancialCareers.com website.

The top five players will be invited to interview for the graduate analyst program or MBA associate program of Banc of America Securities, which sponsored the game. Ekelund, as winner, also receives a lap top computer.

Ekelund said he might aim to become a trader in real life, though in fixed income rather than equities. "I like the more mathematical aspects of fixed income," he said.

Last year's winner, Johan Ekblom, was also an LSE student - and also a Swede, like Ekelund.