Five students from the Siena Classical High School at the World Trading Finals

There is a small group of five Italian students, 18 years old, who have achieved a feat never before achieved: entering the finals of the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition, the most prestigious (and difficult) 'financial competition' globally. Only 50 made it into the finalists, but they prevailed over more than 6,300 teams from around the world (there were over 1,300 more than last year), from 79 countries. Now the finals begin, we shall see: the majority come from the US, but schools from India, China, Turkey, the UK and Singapore are present.

The Italian team, as mentioned, the first to make it this far, is made up of five fourth-year students from the Liceo Classico E.S. Piccolomini di Siena, a school that has always been regarded in the city, rightly so, as very prestigious and difficult. They formed the 'Piccolomini Investment Group' together with the high school management, signed up and last September started the competition, which lasted until December. What does it consist of? Investing (virtually, of course) $500,000 of a client's money, this year former football star Connor Barwin, who in Philadelphia created the Make The World Better foundation.

Says Ruggero Bertotti, team leader: 'We have built an investment model for a medium to long term strategy, focusing on ETFs concentrated on Esg securities. No derivatives'. The team's work was daily and ranged from reading financial newspapers, such as Il Sole 24 Ore, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, but also specialised websites. "We decided to implement a very dynamic management, also to reduce risks before predictable events, such as the release of US economic data". Dynamic management, therefore, 'but not too aggressive'.

Along with Bertotti, Alessandro Vitto, Samuele Pisoni, Raffaele Maria Giuffrè, Giovanni Bossini, and Professor Mario Seazzu was the institute's lecturer of reference. But, one wonders, does this balance with studying? "We found a balance, we divided up the tasks, and in any case during the previous summer we had prepared ourselves". One question, however, has been there since the beginning: why do high school students think about finance, instead of starting a newspaper or opening a cineforum? "In Siena, because of its history that everyone knows, financial culture is a very present element in the city's daily life too, we felt that this was a challenge to be taken up". Bravo.