The Wharton Investment Competition Is Free, Open to Any High Schooler, and More Competitive Than Most People Realize

A group of students is developing an investment thesis in a Siena, Italy, high school classroom. Another team in Bangkok, a few thousand miles away, is following suit. Students in the ninth through twelfth grades in New Jersey, Connecticut, Brazil, Singapore, and the Czech Republic are evaluating businesses, researching market trends, and making decisions in real time regarding a virtual portfolio valued at half a million dollars. None of them are yet enrolled in college, but they are all participating in the same competition.

Since its inception in 2012, the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition, administered by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Global Youth Program, has experienced consistent growth. However, the cycle of 2025–2026 was somewhat of a turning point. At the beginning of trading in September 2025, there were over 6,300 teams registered, up more than 1,300 from the previous year. About 2,300 of those teams from 79 countries had turned in final reports by December, which is almost 30% more than the year before. Those are impressive figures for a free, voluntary, extracurricular competition for teenagers.

Compared to a standard stock market game, the competition’s requirements are more complex. Teams of four to six students, each under the guidance of a teacher, work with a virtual portfolio worth $500,000. This represents an increase from $100,000 in previous years, which may indicate how the organizers perceive the stakes. However, the judges are not primarily interested in raw portfolio performance. This year, Connor Barwin, a former NFL player and Wharton graduate who founded the Make the World Better foundation, is leading each team’s real-world client case study.

Instead of focusing only on maximizing short-term returns, teams must develop an investment strategy that is specifically aligned with that client’s goals, taking into account diversification, risk tolerance, time horizon, and long-term outcomes. It’s a more realistic simulation of real-world portfolio management than most adults likely experienced when they were seventeen.

The competition is structured in phases. A panel comprising professional asset managers, this year from Aberdeen Investments in Philadelphia, and Wharton student evaluators chooses fifty semifinalist teams following an initial trading period and midterm analysis. The top ten of those fifty teams move on to the Global Finale, which takes place on the Wharton campus, after they present their strategies in virtual semifinals.

FigCapital, a team from Stuyvesant High School in New York City, a public school renowned for creating competitive academic teams, emerged victorious in 2026. It is noteworthy that Keystone Capital, Stuyvesant’s second team, was among the top fifty. It’s difficult to determine whether that is due to a strong cohort this year or something specific about the school’s finance culture, but it’s difficult to ignore.

The semifinalist list as a whole has a genuinely intriguing quality. It features students from schools in India, Hong Kong, Thailand, Germany, and Brazil alongside teams from a public high school in rural Ohio and a prep school in Connecticut. The competition is free to enter, which is important because high school students with resources still have a disproportionate amount of access to serious finance education.

A free, internationally accessible program with genuine mentorship built in is a significant counterbalance to that. Given that financial anxiety is a real problem in many households at the moment, it’s possible that the increase in participation in recent years reflects a broader desire among teenagers to understand how money actually works.

The cycle for 2026–2027 has already begun. Officially, the competition started on September 28, 2026, with roster submissions due in October and trading concluding in November. It’s important for students who have never given finance much thought to know that the entrance bar is lower than what the Wharton name might imply. The majority of what it takes to get started is a team that is willing to work hard and a teacher who is willing to act as an advisor.