6Africa Stock Market Challenge · The official handbook
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These rules govern the 6Africa Stock Market Challenge. The platform is an educational simulation: no participant money, brokerage account, deposit, withdrawal, or legal security ownership is involved. All simulated allocations are managed strictly through the MyStocks Africa simulated execution gateway.
Eligibility & divisions
University Division
Exclusively composed of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Teams must embody rigorous macroeconomic, quantitative, or fundamental equity research.
3 to 5 currently enrolled students from a single accredited university. One designated Student Captain acts as administrative liaison.
A named faculty advisor verifies each university team through its private email approval link. Separate department approval is not required.
Verification evidence is retained only for the period stated in the applicable privacy notice and then deleted or de-identified unless law or an active dispute requires longer retention.
Professional Division
Designed for junior analysts, corporate treasury desks, buy-side analysts, and financial institutions operating in or covering African capital markets.
Three to five current employees from one approved institution. One employee is the captain.
Every professional participant verifies a unique work email on the same employer’s verified domain. Sponsor approval is not required.
Portfolio & execution
Trading Specifications Matrix
EXECUTION POLICY 2026.1Simulated liquidity credited at challenge onset.
Eligible African-listed equities and any equity ETFs expressly included in the published challenge universe; bonds, derivatives, short sales, margin, and real-money orders are excluded.
Deducted from team balance on both buy and sell orders.
Local-currency units per USD; local value is divided by the verified platform FX rate.
Order Types & Execution Protocols
Dividends & Corporate Actions
Markets & sessions
Enabled exchanges are loaded from the active challenge edition. Local trading sessions use the platform’s exchange metadata.
Rounds & progression
Registration opens
Oct. 15, 2026
Team captains register their team, invite members, and submit their application through the competition portal.
Registration closes
Nov. 15, 2026
Approved teams are informed of their participation. Participants begin research to prepare for onboarding.
Onboarding
Early Dec. 2026
Walk through the platform. Teams begin defining their investment thesis and building their portfolios.
Portfolios launched
Jan. 1, 2027
Participants publish their starting portfolio on MyStocks, beginning their team’s track record for the Challenge and beyond.
Portfolios managed
Jan. 1, 2027 – Jan. 1, 2028
Teams manage their portfolios during trading windows with live pricing across participating exchanges.
Quarterly reviews
Jan. 1, 2027 – Jan. 1, 2028
Portfolios are ranked and reviewed, with leaderboard standings published at the end of each quarter.
Trading ends
Jan. 1, 2028
Portfolios are locked and judged on final standing, investment thesis, and management over the year.
Final presentations
Q1 2028 · Date to be confirmed
Finalists present their work at an in-person or virtual event, and winners are announced.
Investment Thesis
A structured written thesis is submitted and locked for judging.
Operations Review
Judges assess construction, process, execution feasibility, liquidity, and the deployable share of capital.
Grand Defence
Teams maintain the simulated portfolio through the official window and defend their decisions before judges.
Scoring & judging
University Division Weights
Rigorous macro thesis, currency volatility thesis, and asset-specific catalysts.
Multi-exchange distribution, liquidity sizing, sector correlation control.
Consistency between research memos, execution adjustments, and discipline.
Simulated friction handling, order slippage management, limit order usage.
Time-weighted percentage return from the common trading-open baseline; official USD total/net-return series are used without participant cash flows.
Clarity of defense, response to judge challenges, cross-team coherence.
Professional Division Weights
Institutional memorandum, risk appetite framework, liquidity screening.
Portfolio construction, diversification, liquidity and the deployable share of simulated capital.
Audit log rigor, trade rationale records, governance sign-offs.
Realistic market absorption, average daily trading volume (ADTV) discipline.
Time-weighted percentage return from the common trading-open baseline; official USD total/net-return series are used without participant cash flows.
Benchmarks & integrity
S&P Pan Africa BMI Total Return (USD)
An official USD total-return African equity benchmark. Published provider methodology determines its universe and calculation.
MSCI ACWI Net Return (USD)
USD Net Total Return. Gauges continental asset allocation against global developed and emerging equity opportunity costs over the challenge horizon.
S&P 500 Total Return (USD)
USD Total Return. Standard hurdle benchmark assessing team returns relative to standard dollar-denominated large-cap index alternatives.
gavel Committee Integrity Safeguards & Discretionary Authority
Submitted theses lock at the deadline. Challenge records, scores, approvals, and administrative actions are time-stamped.
The Challenge Committee retains sovereign authority to inspect trade logs, order velocity, and pricing inputs to prevent latency gaming or synthetic exploitation.
The committee may suspend, restore, disqualify, or unpublish a team with a recorded reason and preserved audit evidence.
Conduct & privacy
Ethical Standards & Conduct Articles
Participants may use public information only and must not use or disclose material nonpublic information.
Client information, employer-confidential information, proprietary restricted-list data, and research that the participant is not authorized to share must not be entered into the platform.
Each participant must comply with applicable law and their employer's personal-dealing, confidentiality, conflicts, and challenge-participation policies. Actual or perceived conflicts of interest must be disclosed promptly to the challenge committee.
The simulation must not be used to coordinate, recommend, or execute real-market activity.
Purpose-Limited Verification Policy
Identity, employment affiliation, eligibility, challenge administration, assessment, integrity, security, and reporting.
The challenge collects only information reasonably required for those purposes. Employment documents are requested only when domain and work-email verification are insufficient.
Verification evidence is restricted to authorized challenge operations, security, legal, and compliance reviewers.
Verification evidence is retained only for the period stated in the applicable privacy notice and then deleted or de-identified unless law or an active dispute requires longer retention.
Public profiles, participant images, recruiting visibility, and marketing use require separate optional consent and are not conditions of participation.
Employer authorization & awards
Every professional participant verifies a unique work email on the same employer’s verified domain. Sponsor approval is not required.
Awards, eligibility conditions, funding amounts, custody arrangements, and jurisdiction restrictions are binding only when published in the official award schedule before scored trading begins. Participation does not guarantee a cash prize, funded account, employment opportunity, or investment account.
For a complete offline copy, download the official PDF.
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