Always wanted to play the share market but never known how to? Fantasy Fund Manager, a new game which borrows from its wildly popular Sports equivalents, is a fun and free introduction to investing in equities – and easy as pie to participate. In this interview Corion’s Garreth Montano tells Alec Hogg of BizNews what the game is about, where the idea came from, how it works and the prizes on offer. Sign up now, challenge your pals and have fun while you get to learn about the share market, the greatest game on earth.
Some extracts from the interview below
Garreth Montano on why the Fantasy Fund Manager game is being launched
So, the primary drivers are really around educating and getting new market participants involved in financial markets generally. Corion and I think that the partners that we’ve partnered with here in BizNews, as our media partner and then our platinum sponsors, which I’m sure we’ll touch on a bit later. I think everyone is passionate about educating, and improving financial literacy. There is, as you know, a lot of media coverage around the dire savings problem that we have in South Africa. And I think education is a big part of what we’ve got to do to get to the next level of investors involved in financial services, to get educated and to get an understanding of how important saving is. So in mixing and marrying a game and an educational concept around investing, we are very excited about people that we can reach.
On demystifying and decoding investing for everyone
I think the financial services industry as a whole is obviously a highly regulated industry and there’s often impediments to how we market relative to some of the less mainstream concepts. But I think that shouldn’t stop us from pushing the bounds a little bit. And I think that’s what we’ve done, we’ve tried to create a simple interface to allow people access to markets that they’re often afraid of. In a fun way you get to have a look at and invest in companies, you get to compete against friends, families, peers and even against professionals like Piet Viljoen. So we think we’re ticking all the boxes.
The most important thing is really to demystify and try to help decode investing. We see a lot of people exposing money in the market, whether it be the crypto market, which just gained massive traction in the retail base, a lot of people are investing. And we’ve got a very evolved financial services industry in South Africa – unbelievable exchanges now, not just one exchange. And we are hoping that we’re going to get a lot more people interested in the stock market.
Read more: Local is lekker again: March’s pullback in SA stocks makes them a ‘buy’ – Bacher
On the format of stock picking
So, the format of the game is that you pick your six shares on day one. And as I mentioned earlier, there is a weekly competition, a monthly competition and then the six month grand prize – obviously to be eligible for the six month grand prize, you need to have been there from the outset. However you are able, once you’ve entered to change your shares on a weekly basis and you’re also able to participate in the weekly and monthly competitions even if you missed the start of the competition. So there is something for everyone, there’s something for the early birds and the guys who are really enthusiastic, with their eye on the big prize. But then also as we go along, you know, people who want to come in and out of the competition, there’re still incentives along the way.
How many stocks can be selected from each sector
Ten stocks per sector. And what we’ve also tried to achieve through the game, through BizNews as a partner, is to have interactions. So we are going to have a weekly report back on the rankings and leaderboard, the best performing shares, who’s picked which share percentages, and who has invested in different shares so that people can get insight as to what their peers are doing and then also get word from the professionals themselves, including our sponsors and what they think are good picks, and what they’re looking at in the market. So we’re really trying to engage as much as possible. Â
