How to play

Who can play?
You must be a current FT subscriber and register for the game with a valid email address.

How does the game work?
Each player can run one portfolio. The portfolio must have a minimum of five stocks and you can invest up to 25 per cent of your money in a single company. At the start of the game, you will be given 100,000 credits to invest for your portfolio and this will rise and fall depending on the share price movements of your chosen stock.

Stocks can be bought and sold throughout the duration of the game. Any changes you make to your portfolio will take effect at 8am UK time, so you can make early trades and react to daily news. You will find further details in the FAQ below.

The grand prize of £1,000 will go to the winner at the end the 8-week season of the game ([terms and conditions apply]).

How do I create my portfolio?
To create a portfolio, you need to be a current FT subscriber who has registered for the FT Stock Picking Game. Once you are logged in, the “Create Portfolio” button will be available on the game's homepage. Follow the guide there to create your portfolio.

Which stocks are included in the game?
The game includes selected stocks from LSE, Nasdaq, NYSE and main listings from other European exchanges.

How do you manage your portfolio?
To keep things simple, you won’t need to constantly rebalance your portfolio. If you put 20 per cent into a stock, it will stay at 20 per cent unless you increase or decrease the allocation yourself. Instead, the total value of the portfolio will change to reflect share price movements.

How do I make changes to my portfolio?
Click the “Manage My Portfolio” button, located on the front page of the FT Stock Picking Game under the Intraday Chart. In the open menu, you are allowed to delete, add, or change the percentage of the shares in your portfolio. You must select a minimum of five shares, with an allocated percentage between 5-25%. The total invested amount must not be less than or equal to 100%. The changes in weighing will affect your portfolio at the beginning of the next day at 8am UK time.

How do you set up a league?
You have the option to create a private league for friends, family, classmates, or colleagues. Leagues provide a simple way to compare results within a smaller group. You can create up to three leagues per player.

To create a league, simply click the League tab in the menu, click "Create League" and give the league a name.

To invite others to the league, share the link to the league or direct people to search for your portfolio name in the game to add themselves to the league.

If you create a private league, all players must be approved by the league owner to join.

I have added a US stock but I don't see it in my portfolio. Why?
All stocks you add to your portfolio will appear in your portfolio when the London Stock Exchange opens at 8am UK time on trading days. If you buy US stocks, they will only appear when the US markets open later in the day.

How does the game calculate my portfolio’s performance?
Your portfolio’s performance is based on the individual performance of shares you own. Increases and decreases in the value of these shares are tracked from a base price which is the moment when they are “bought”.

The base price is used to determine both the overall return of the share since you bought it, i.e. its historical return, and the return you have had today (i.e. its intraday return).

Shares that are included in your portfolio, from the previous trading day, will have a base price from the previous Close price. And so any increases or decreases in the share price will be calculated from the last day’s Close price.

If a share was added as a result of re-weighing, the base price of your holding is the Open price for the share the next trading day. Any increases or decreases in the share price will be calculated from that day’s Open price.

If your portfolio was created during trading hours, when all of your shares were bought, the base price will be the next observed trading price after you complete your portfolio.

A portfolio’s value changes proportionally with the price change of each share times its allocated percentage. But the allocation to each share does not change when prices increase or decrease.

For example, portfolio A holds a 25% of share X. When share X rises in price by 40%, the portfolio will gain 10%. However, the 25% allocation to share X will not increase by 40% (to 35%). Only the total value of the portfolio will increase, and the % allocations that the user has set stay according to their settings.

I can see that my portfolio is down today, but when I check the individual shares in my portfolio they are up. How is this possible?
Discrepancies can appear between the performance of your portfolio and the stocks contained within it due how each is calculated. For example:

If you rebalanced your portfolio so that one or more shares were added, or you increased your exposure to a stock, those shares would have been bought at the Open price this morning. The performance of your portfolio would reflect that movement. When you look at individual stocks, their performance is calculated from the previous day's Close price. So a share can be up from its Open price, but down on yesterday's Close price.

When I buy or sell a share, which price do I buy or sell at?
When you make a change to your portfolio, such as adding or removing shares, or increasing the percentage of an existing share holding, the changes are queued up to be executed when markets open the next day, so you “buy” or “sell” at the next day’s opening price.

A share I hold increased significantly in price, but still comprises the same percentage of my portfolio on the following day. Shouldn’t it increase?
That is a deliberate simplification to make the FT Stock Picking Game more accessible and fun. You can think of it as your portfolio’s percentages being automatically adjusted at the end of the trading day to maintain the same percentages as it was at the beginning of that day, using the official closing price for re-weighing. This way you can spend less time manually reweighting your portfolio to align with your strategy, and more time finding interesting shares in which to invest.

I saw that my portfolio was valued differently yesterday after trading hours. Today, I see on the historical chart that the value is different. Why is that?
The value you see during trading hours is an estimate of your portfolio’s value based on intraday trading prices. At the end of the day, the actual value of your portfolio is calculated based on official close prices. Therefore, these values (the last trade that you saw intraday that affected the value of your portfolio and closing price) might be different.