What happened when we let Times readers bet $10,000 on stocks
That is the challenge we set Times readers last week. Buy and sell any stock in the S&P 500 or the FTSE 100 and jump forward in time, watching how the actions of the Trump administration have affected global markets. You can play it here.
So, how did readers get on as stock market traders?
The average player managed to turn their $10,000 investment into about $14,000 over the eight simulated months, meaning that they generated $4,000 profit — a return of 40 per cent.
This is a pretty good return, even if readers knew exactly what would happen: $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 would have returned $10,787, and the same in the FTSE 100 would have resulted in $11,095 — although $10,000 in bitcoin, turning into $16,931, would have beaten the lot.
Trump's tariffs resulted in a frenzy of trading, helping Barclays to a 23 per cent jump in pre-tax profits in the first half of the year.
There are, of course, some objectively 'better' stocks to pick. The US AI firm Palantir, co-founded by the Trump ally Peter Thiel, has more than tripled its value since the election. Other US AI firms and computer chip manufacturers (such as Super Micro Computer Inc and Jabil Inc) have also experienced strong growth, as well as companies in AI adjacent sectors, particularly energy stocks such as the General Electrics power spin-off GE Vernova Inc, which has benefited from increased demand from AI data centres.
• The cheap and easy way to invest (without the risk)
A significant number of readers wisely put all their money into Palantir, yielding returns of 200 per cent. But the highest profits were for those who traded repeatedly at optimum times. Only two players turned their $10,000 into more than $100,000; at the time of writing, the top score was an eye-watering $441,681.
The highest possible score, buying the best performing stock day after day, was well over a trillion dollars. Compounding returns, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, really are the eighth wonder of the world.
For data privacy reasons, we don't know which stocks the top performer picked. However, on average, those who played did not opt for high-risk, high-reward US tech stocks. In fact, most readers put their money into recognisable UK companies that had a track record of doing well.
Readers rightly focused on UK defence stocks such as Rolls-Royce, BAE and also Babcock, the best performing FTSE 100 company during the period. All those stocks boomed after Trump's realignment of global defence.
• Bull or bear? Find out what kind of investor you are
Other top performers picked out by readers included Airtel Africa, International Airlines Group (which owns British Airways) and the mining firm Fresnillo. For the FTSE at least, readers had a good sense of where the gains have been, with most of the ten best-performing stocks over the period being in the most-bought list.
The above looks at which stocks had the most money invested. But the list of stocks that were bought and sold the most — that is, with the highest number of trades — shows a preference towards US growth firms.
Top of this list is Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, and Elon Musk's Tesla, both of which have share prices inherently tied to unpredictable and volatile entities.
Readers also explored options with oil and steel stocks. Due to tariff changes, these companies were particularly volatile. Many readers bought BP, others looked at Chevron or the US steel manufacturer Steel Dynamics. There were good profits to be had with all these, but you'd need to buy and sell at specific times to really make a good profit.
• I want to invest in Europe's comeback. Where do I start?
These lists also feature unexpected appearances from 3M, 3i Group, AES Corporation and APA Corporation. Theses companies didn't perform particularly well over the period and their inclusion is likely to be due to their names appearing at the top alphabetically, rather than being selected as part of a broader investment strategy.
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