Andrea Bortolini on the Podium of the Yale Stock Trading Game

There was a moment of suspense when, during the last transaction, a connection problem made Andrea Bortolini doubt that the operation had been completed. Fortunately, this was not the case, and Andrea, a 22-year-old student from Bassano del Grappa enrolled in the first year of the Bocconi MSc in Finance, managed to win the silver medal at the Yale Stock Trading Game. The competition is organized by GNAM, the Global Network for Advanced Management, which includes 32 major business schools based in different continents, countries, cultures and economies.

The game was played by over 500 students from 12 academic institutions that are part of the network (ESMT, Koc, Lagos, Oxford Said, University of British Columbia, AIM, Fudan, Renmin, IIM Bangalore, Hitotsubashi, in addition to Bocconi and Yale). After preliminary rounds, only 80 players were left to compete for the final stage and a spot on the podium, which was virtual, like the rest of the competition.

"We all started from a common point", explains Andrea, "We had the same money and same shares. The aim was to make transactions with other participants and obtain the highest return". A sort of free-for-all, during which "Bocconi's courses on game theory came in quite handy", says the student. As did Andrea's passion for the stock market, a topic he studies in depth even outside class, "and the ability to understand collective psychology, trying to understand how people think and exploit it to one's advantage".

Another aspect that determined Andrea's brilliant result was his strategy: "With the money available, you could immediately start buying and selling shares or you could allocate part of the funds to acquire information to understand what the stock's intrinsic value was and only then start trading. I chose this second path, and it paid off." Usually in competitions like these, in addition to the prize, it is the lessons you get from it that are important. And this was true also on this occasion: "It was definitely a formative experience", replies Andrea Bortolini with conviction, "first of all because I was able to compare myself with students from all over the world who study the same subjects as me, then also because this competition reproduced the mechanisms of what actually happens in the stock market. The award Yale sent me to certify my second place finish is a great starting point for my future career".