On October 10, ICICIdirect Centre for Financial Learning (ICFL), a knowledge initiative of ICICI Securities Ltd,  announced the launch of StockMIND 2014, a nation-wide contest aimed at college students enabling them to showcase their stock investment skills.
ICFL aims at educating the youth on investing in the stock market through this unique and interesting initiative. In its first year of launch, the StockMIND initiative reached out to over 30,000 students and 250 colleges across the country. StockMIND 2014 promises to be bigger and better with participation expected from graduate and post-graduate colleges from across disciplines including Management, Engineering, Commerce, Science and Arts, among others.

“The StockMIND event is aimed at today’s younger generation. It provides an opportunity to learn the tricks of investing while making the entire process interesting and interactive. We believe StockMIND will not only help students become a better investor but also a better professional by sharpening their analytical, critical thinking, decision making and risk taking abilities. Since these skills are required by all, students from all disciplines are invited to participate in the event,” said Vineet Arora, EVP and Head of Product and Distribution, ICICI Securities Ltd.

As a precursor to the competition, a seminar would be organized in all the colleges. The seminar would cover basics of equity investment and the importance of equity investing in managing personal finances better. After the seminar, students can register through SMS or by visiting Virtual Stocks (virtualstocks.icicidirect.com) on ICICIdirect.com.

Virtual Stocks is an online simulator on ICICidirect.com that replicates the experience of online stock investing by using virtual money in the real-time stock market.

Post registration, students from various colleges will be given Rs 15 lakh of virtual money to be invested in equity market using the Virtual Stock platform. These investments would be made over a period of ten days. Since the market scenario is real-time, the student is encouraged to research listed companies in current environment and take informed decisions.

At the end of ten-days, participants with highest net worth, from every college, will bag the title of StockMIND.

At the end of the competition, an expert from the ICFL faculty would evaluate the best and worst investment decisions taken by participants.

The winners from each college would compete in the StockMIND National round to be held in February 2014. There are attractive prizes for the winners at each level and the national round winner would win a grand prize. 

ICICIdirect Centre for Financial Learning (ICFL) is an initiative of ICICI Securities set up with an objective of simplifying financial knowledge and increasing financial literacy amongst prospective or experienced investors and knowledge seekers. ICFL recently won the award for Innovation in Learning and Best Online Learning Solution at the World Education Congress.