How to Play

The UK Share Picking Game is all about picking the best performing shares.

Do your research, pick a company's share to add to your holdings and the price will rise or fall. If it goes up that's good news, but if it falls you will be losing ground.

The game is free to play. When you sign up you will nee to enter into a league to start placing picks, we sugest joining the weekly prize league for the week you join.

Winning leagues

To win a league you must have the best overall performance in the league when it closes.

Prize League Rules

To Qualify for any of the Prize Leagues you must meet the below criteria:

Prize League Weekly:

Place a minimum of 1 pick in a week (Max of 10 picks) in the Weekly Prize League to qualify.

Prize League Monthly:

Place a minimum of 8 picks (Max of 40 picks) in the Monthly Prize League will qualify you for that Month.

Prize League Quarterly:

For the Quarterly Prize League you must pick 4 different stocks, with at least 1 pick per Month in that quarter to qualify (Max of 120 picks).

Prize League Annually:

To qualify for the Annual Prize League you must qualify for at least 2 of the 4 quarters (see Quarterly Qualification Rules above) in the Game Year and picked a minimum of 8 different stocks (Max of 520 picks).

Please note that the availability of prize leagues may vary.

The prize leagues

The Player that has the best performance will be awarded the prize. Only picks placed during that league are included in this competition. You may only win the weekly prize league once in a given month. This does not affect your ability to win the monthly, quarterly or annual prize leagues. If you are the best performing again in the same month, then you will not be awarded the prize money. It will be given to the person performing second best.

What counts as the best performance?

The game revolves around the performance of the shares that you pick.

You pick a share and buy / sell it to add it to your holdings. You can then hold it to the end of the game, or you can sell out early; you may want to do this to either bank gains, or cut your losses.

The percentage difference between the share price when you buy / sell your pick and the price at the end of the game, or when you sell, is the gain or loss added to your performance.

If you buy a share and the price goes up while you hold it, you make a gain. If the share price goes down while you hold it you make a loss and vice versa if you sell a stock.

Until you close your holding on the share, its performance will continue to update as the share price changes.

Your overall performance is the sum of all your picks. For example, if you have three picks with a performance of +3%, -2% and +10%. Your overall performance will be +11%.

Picking shares

There are 'Pick share' buttons throughout the game. To buy /sell a share for your holdings: click Pick Share; type in the name of the company to find it; choose it; and buy / sell it.

To replicate real life share dealing, in the game at any one time there are always two prices displayed for a share. A buy and a sell price.

The price you pay to buy (Ask price) is almost always higher than the price you sell at (Bid price). The gap in the middle is called the spread and it's how the market makers make their money. These are the institutions that bear the risk when you sell a share - they have to hold it in the hope that they can find a buyer and take a cut.

This is why when you pick a share in the game, it will usually display an instant loss.

WARNING: Some smaller companies can have a big difference between their buy and sell prices and you may find it harder to recoup the loss when picking these. Check both Ask and Bid prices before you pick one of these. We will not remove a pick that you feel you opened in error because it registers a large instant loss.

When you pick a share while the market is open it will show as 'Pending' until the delayed price catches up with the real-time price. This is designed to limit any gains a player with access to real-time prices might have over others who don't.

You can only have one pick in a company in a league at any one time and you can only pick the same company’s share once per trading day. You can pick the same company on the same day in separate leagues, i.e. if you play them in both The Weekly Prize League and other private leagues.

You can make a maximum of ten share picks per week per prize league, but there is no weekly limit on how many shares you can close.

If you pick a share after ‘Close’ on any trading day, the price for that share will show as ‘Pending’ and will be the ‘Open’ price on the next trading day. For the purposes of the game, ‘Open’ is the first available price offered by the market and may not match the officially published ‘Open’ price.

Prices are calculated every time the share price is updated, which is roughly every minute. Some smaller companies' prices update less often.

Why hasn't my share shown up?

As we said, if you buy a share during market hours, which we say is Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm, it will show in your 'picked share' overview page and picks table as 'Pending'. This means your pick hasn't been matched up with a price yet. It can take up to 15 minutes.

Once the prices catch up your share will go into 'My Picks'.

In fact the London Stock Market closes at 4.40pm but it can take up to half an hour for all the closing prices to filter through to the game.

Closing Picks

You can simply pick shares and hold them to the end of the game. Alternatively, you may decide you want to close your holding early.

Perhaps you might think your share has gone up as much as you think it can and you want to bank your gains, or its price is crashing and you want to cut any more losses. If so, you can close your holding at any time by viewing your My Picks overview page and clicking the Close button.

Please note that ANY SHARE(S) YOU CLOSE CANNOT BE PICKED AGAIN ON THE SAME TRADING DAY. (For example, a share closed on a Monday cannot be opened again that day; you must wait until the next trading day (Tuesday) to buy it again.)

Private leagues

We suggest you create a league of your own and play in there too. You can use this league to practise in and invite friends.

You don't want to mess up your chances in one of the prize league by making a silly mistake and you may want to choose different shares to play against friends rather than for the Main Prize League. This is why in the game you hold different portfolios for the different leagues you are entered into.

If you want to play the same shares in both, then you will need to pick them for each one.

You need to set a time frame that you want your league to last. You can then invite people to join your league.

If you have more than one league, when you pick a share you need to select which league it will go into. You can also provide a research link and comment if you wish.

If you are on one of your league pages, the share you pick will go into that league.

Follow players

This is a great way of keeping track of players to see what companies they are picking - especially if they are doing well.

Researching companies

Stockomendation has a wealth of information that will help you on your way to becoming a winner.

If you drill down into our data you will find a vast array of facts and figures to help you assess whether a share price is correctly backed up by the company's data.

Winners

Winners will be informed by email or telephone (if provided). We will also ask you to provide us with official documentation (i.e. a passport or driving licence) so we can verify your identity. Prizes are payable in to a UK bank account only. The initials and counties of the winners will be available after the closing date by writing to us.

Tie break for prizes

In the event of a tie for any of the three main prizes, that prize will be awarded by means of a prize draw from all tied entries. In the event of a tie for the weekly prizes, the prize will be awarded to the player who picked the winning share first. If there is still a tie, a prize draw will take place. The first participant drawn at random will receive that prize. The draw will continue until the applicable prizes have been awarded or until there are no more tied participants remaining.

Avatars

We encourage players to add a picture to their player profile to make the game more colourful and fun. Your avatar should be your own work or a picture you have taken. It will also appear in the top right hand corner of the screen as a handy reminder of where the manage account and log out button is located.

(Updated 09 March 2022)