Predict the winners of lockdown easing – and win £1,000 a week
Fantasy Fund Manager is back for a third season, with weekly treats and a £5,000 grand prize
The third season of the game begins next week
Normally, Telegraph Money advocates the “get rich slow” approach. But with fantasy investing, the opposite strategy is required.
Without risking a penny of your own, you could be quids in by playing Season Three of Fantasy Fund Manager, our stock-picking game, launching this Tuesday.
Everyone starts with a notional £100,000 to buy between five and 20 stocks from the FTSE 350, with unliited trading. The best performing fund each week wins £1,000, while whoever is top after two months takes home the £5,000 grand prize.
Brexit will be key for players next year
Company takeovers can be unreliable but being on the right side of one has propelled this Fantasy Fund Manager to the weekly £100 prize.
Jackson Read, a 25-year-old from Southend-on-Sea, turned around the performance of his Jacko Cap portfolio, which rose from £94,993 to £107,372 this week, pushing him into the top 350 players overall.
Despite being a stock market trader, Mr Read is unable, for compliance reasons, to invest his own money in the stock market. “The Telegraph competition offers me a way to test myself against others,” he said.
He struck big by holding Signature Aviation, an aeroplane manufacturer. Shares in the company rose by 50pc after private equity firm BlackStone Group put in a $4.3bn (£3.2bn) bid for the firm.
Shares in AstraZeneca tumbled on Monday after it announced a $39bn (£29bn) mega deal for American rival Alexion. But has the pharmaceutical giant made the wrong decision?
Alexion shareholders will receive $60 in cash plus two AstraZeneca shares – a total value of $175 per share, a 45pc premium to the American firm s current share price. Nervous investors were quick to sell AstraZeneca with the deal representing the largest in the firm’s history.
Alexion is developing a personalised immunology therapy, which could be lucrative in the future, but Susannah Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdown called the deal an “an expensive gamble”.
Others were more positive. Andrew Braum of Citi, the research firm, rated AstraZeneca as a “buy”, despite shares falling almost 6pc on Monday.