Photo Credits:Red Core Photography
Day 1
INFER 2014 commenced with two rounds being played simultaneously: Invesdecide and Stock Trading.In Invesdecide participants were given information about Engro Corporation and they had to judge the company’s position and market demand to decide whether to expand by introducing a frozen food line, a ready to eat line or hold the expansion and work on their own financial position .For this round each team had eight minutes to present their position and they were judged by Akmal Jameel, Faisal Abdullah, Tanveer Hussain, Muhammad Ali Khan, Dr Manzoor A. Khalidi and Arsalan Aqeeq. Meanwhile in Gani and Tayub auditorium,a stock market was being played out. The participants were given a budget of a 100,000 and they had to play brokers in a simulated stock market. Buying and selling of shares was done every 15 minutes when the virtual stock market was updated.
The second event on day was the buzzer round where the participants took the stage and had to answer MCQs on a buzzer basis in which participants were awarded a score of 10 on each correct answer and negatively awarded a score of 5 on each wrong answer. With this round INFER at this date came to an end leaving curiosity for teams for their scores to be updated on Facebook page by Day 2.
Day 2
The second day commenced once again with two rounds being played simultaneously: Balance Factor round and Stock Trading (Continued from Day 1). In Balance Factor round participants were provided details for five virtual companies and they had to decide for investment in three of them with minimum investment of 150K and maximum of 500K. Three members per team had to present their investment decisions to our prestigious judges; Muhammad Asim, Khurram Shahid, Mustafa Jaffir, Owais Saleem Dada and Ali Hemani.
The second event of the day was the case study round, where each team was provided with data for a hypothetical bank and they had to perform calculations for the given statistics. With that, second day for INFER came to an end leaving behind announcement for the top six teams, which were updated on their Facebook page.
Day 3
INFER 2014 was wrapping up on February 9th, 2014. Infer received 55 registrations out of which 35 were shortlisted. Through knockout, only 7 teams made it to the final day. These finalists were promised a surprise at the end of the second day. The surprise was emailed to them at midnight which contained details about a hypothetical Coffee Monopoly in Pakistan. The participants were required to study all the details about the hypothetical Coffee Company, and decide whether or not they wanted to invest in its stock; accordingly the fifth round was known as Bull or Bear. Once a decision was made, they had to present in front of the judges, declaring their position and justifying why they chose it.
The sixth and the last round of INFER 2014 was “Every News is a Breaking News”. Teams were required to analyse and interpret the impact that different variables in the macro-economy will have on their particular industry, so that they make sound arguments in favour or against such changes. The last round enticed a lot of enthusiasm out of the participants as they indulged in a battle of financial wits to dominate the argument.
After head to head competitions, the judges had to decide who took the crown. The champions of INFER 2014 were Team KSBL. The award for Best Trader went to Team Credit Crunchers. With this INFER 2014 came to an end, creating a landmark in the history of academic economic and financial events of Pakistan.
