Business Studies: Market Capitalisation Game

Step into the shoes of a savvy investor and learn to analyse and respond to real market movements. This simulation challenges students to calculate, invest, react to news, and reassess valuations, while tracking a personal portfolio over multiple quarters. Learners start with £10,000, calculate initial market capitalisations, decide how many shares to buy, react to company news each quarter, recalculate prices and market caps, and choose whether to buy or sell before seeing their final portfolio performance.

It’s designed for minimal setup and maximum engagement: a clear, on-screen flow walks students from instructions to investment decisions to results, making it ideal for whole-class demonstrations, paired strategy work, or independent practice. The activity naturally blends numeracy and economics, prompting accurate percentage calculations, valuation reasoning, and iterative decision-making under uncertainty. Reflection prompts can be used at each stage to surface why prices have moved, what risks were priced in, and how new information changes intrinsic and market value.

Learning Outcomes: understand how stock prices and company value are affected by external events; apply percentage calculations and financial literacy in a strategic context; develop analytical thinking and decision-making under uncertainty; grasp the fundamentals of market dynamics and investor behaviour.

The simulation is accompanied by a PDF worksheet that provides classroom ideas for use, including ways to run it as a timed market round, suggestions for discussion starters and plenaries, guidance for differentiation and assessment for learning, printable trade logs and calculation spaces, and optional extension paths for advanced groups. Use the worksheet to adapt the activity for GCSE or A-Level classes, for starter tasks or full lessons, and for homework or flipped learning follow-ups.