Frequently asked questions

1. Who is eligible to enter Spring 2026?

The QGF Global Portfolio Challenge is open to currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students at recognised universities and equivalent higher-education institutions worldwide. A student is eligible if they hold a valid student status on the registration closing date of 27 February 2026. Recently graduated students who completed their programme after 1 September 2025 may request a one-season courtesy entry; write to register@qgf.org with proof of graduation date.

High-school students are not the primary audience for QGF. Adjacent programmes such as the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition and the SIFMA Stock Market Game are designed for secondary-school cohorts; we describe them on The Field so teachers can point younger students to a better-fit contest. A high-school student who is simultaneously enrolled in a university module may join a QGF team only if the university confirms enrolment.

There is no nationality, visa or campus-residency requirement. Remote and hybrid students are welcome. Faculty may register as mentors, not as scoring team members. QGF Limited staff, contractors working on the Challenge, and members of the organising committee are ineligible for the season in which they serve.

2. What is the permitted team size?

A team is three to six students. Two-person teams are allowed only where a university coordinator certifies that no third teammate could be found after a public call on campus. Teams of seven or more must split; the platform will not accept a seventh scoring seat. One member is nominated as the form submitter and is the only person authorised to send the monthly fund-change form.

A student may sit on only one QGF team in a given season. Cross-university teams are allowed if every member is independently eligible and the form submitter names a single corresponding university for ranking purposes. Universities with 100 or more registered students receive a dedicated cohort ranking in addition to the global leaderboard.

If a teammate withdraws mid-season, the remaining members continue with the same virtual account. Replacement members may be added before the third monthly round provided they have not already competed on another Spring 2026 team. After round three the roster is frozen except for documented medical or academic-leave substitutions approved by the programme office.

3. Which instruments are allowed?

QGF is a simulated multi-asset portfolio challenge, not a single-name stock-picking game. Teams allocate the virtual US$100,000 across a published basket of international investment funds. Each fund is treated as a unitised vehicle whose price starts at US$1.00 on day one and then moves with the ten investment-influencing factors plus broader market conditions described in the rulebook.

The published basket typically spans equity-region funds, a global bond fund, a US-dollar cash/currency fund, and selected thematic or real-asset funds. Teams may not invent tickers, trade individual listed stocks, write options, use leverage, short a fund, or place orders in crypto-assets, private placements or unlisted vehicles. If an instrument is not on the season’s fund list, it is out of bounds.

The 10%–50% band per fund is the diversification rule: no all-in bets and no token 1% sleeves. Allocations must be integer percentages and must sum to 100%. An invalid mix is rejected and the previous month’s ratio is carried forward. See How to Play for the worked allocation grid.

4. How does monthly rebalancing work?

Rebalancing is the monthly fund-change form. Once per month, during the published submission window, the form submitter records a new integer percentage for each fund. The team has ten minutes of structured discussion time associated with the round; the form itself can be prepared in advance and submitted when the window opens. After submit, the form cannot be retrieved or amended for that round.

Late, duplicate or invalid forms inherit the previous month’s allocation (or, in month one, a 100% automatic allocation to the USD currency fund). No objections are allowed on process grounds once the window closes. Price moves during the month do not themselves trigger a rebalance; drift is part of the risk the team chose. If you want to restore a target weight, you must say so on the next form.

There is no intra-month trading, no limit orders and no “stop-loss” instruction. Mentors may help the team interpret the ten factors; they may not complete or send the form. A team that sits out a month is not disqualified — it simply keeps last month’s mix, for better or worse.

5. Which data sources may teams use?

Teams may use any public, legally obtained information: company and fund reports, central-bank publications, national statistics offices, reputable news, academic papers, and free or university-licensed market data terminals. Bloomberg, FactSet, Refinitiv and similar campus terminals are permitted where the university licence allows student use for coursework. Paid retail data subscriptions paid for by the team are allowed; QGF does not reimburse them.

Non-public information is forbidden. That includes material non-public information obtained from internships, family offices, or private chat groups, and any data scraped in breach of a website’s terms. Inside-information claims will be treated as prohibited conduct under the expanded rulebook.

Each monthly rationale must cite the sources the team actually used. A bibliography of five to fifteen sources is typical. Fabricated citations are a conduct violation. Where two teams in the same university share a terminal, they may share raw data pulls but must write independent rationales; copied write-ups are penalised on the process pillar.

6. What is the AI research policy?

Generative AI may be used as a research assistant, not as an author of record and not as a decision-maker. Allowed uses include summarising a public filing the team has opened, translating a source, checking arithmetic, and brainstorming questions the team then answers itself. Disallowed uses include pasting the monthly factor pack into a model and submitting the model’s allocation, generating a rationale the team has not read and edited, and fabricating sources or quotations.

Every submission that used an AI tool must include a short AI-use statement: tool name, version or date, and a one-sentence description of the task. “We asked a chatbot what to buy” is not an acceptable process. Mentors should not run prompts on the team’s behalf in a way that substitutes for student judgement.

QGF may run originality checks on rationales. A process-pillar penalty applies where the write-up cannot be explained by the named students in a follow-up call. The policy is educational: we want students to learn how to supervise a tool, not to outsource the portfolio.

7. How is scoring structured — return versus risk versus process?

The Cup is awarded to the team with the highest account balance on settlement day, as Rule 14 states. That is the headline ranking. Alongside the Cup, Spring 2026 publishes three scoring pillars so that a reckless path to a high balance is visible, and so that a careful process is recognised even when markets do not cooperate.

Return pillar. Cumulative change in the virtual account from the US$100,000 starting fund, after the six monthly rounds. This is the Cup metric.

Risk pillar. A simple, published score based on month-to-month drawdown, concentration against the 10%–50% band (already a hard constraint), and whether the team stayed inside the risk notes they themselves wrote in month one. Extreme one-month swings are not banned, but they are labelled on the public leaderboard so readers can see the path, not only the finish.

Process pillar. Completeness and honesty of the monthly rationale, source quality, AI-use disclosure, and whether the allocation can be mapped to the written thesis. Process does not override Rule 14 for the Cup. It does determine honourable mentions, school-cohort certificates, and eligibility for featured write-ups on this site. A worked numerical example lives in the rulebook.

8. How do certificates work, and how can anyone check them?

After awards, QGF issues digital Certificates of Achievement to Cup winners, pillar commendations, and (where a university meets the 100-student threshold) school-cohort certificates. Each certificate carries a unique ID, a QR code and a verification URL on verify.html that resolves to cert/verify.html.

Anyone — an employer, a registrar, a journalist — can paste the URL or ID into the public lookup. A valid certificate shows the name, award line and season. A tampered ID fails the checksum and will not render. QGF does not publish a public list of named student winners on this website; verification is one-to-one, which protects students who prefer not to be indexed while still letting a hiring manager confirm a claim.

Staff issue certificates from an internal page that search engines are told not to index. Participants never need that page. If a name is misspelled, write to support@qgf.org with the certificate ID; a corrected file can be re-issued with a new checksum. Printed copies are valid only if the QR still resolves.

9. Is there an entry fee?

No. Spring 2026 is free for all eligible students. There is no purchase, no paid “premium data pack”, and no required software licence beyond a web browser and email. Optional campus terminals and paid news subscriptions are the team’s choice. The Global Virtual Internship is a separate programme with its own application and is not required to compete in the Challenge.

10. In which languages may we submit?

The official working languages of the Challenge are English and Simplified Chinese. Monthly fund-change figures are language-neutral (integer percentages). The written rationale may be filed in English or Simplified Chinese. Mixed-language bibliographies are fine. Other languages may be used in internal team discussion; the submitted rationale must still be in one of the two official languages so that the process pillar can be read by the committee.

11. What happens if we miss a monthly form?

The previous month’s allocation remains in force. In month one, a missed or invalid form places 100% in the USD currency fund. Missing a form is not a disqualification and does not by itself zero the process pillar, but a blank rationale that month scores zero on process for that round. Repeated no-shows may be noted in school-cohort reports sent to the university coordinator.

12. What may mentors do — and what must they not do?

Mentors (faculty, alumni, industry volunteers) help the team interpret the ten monthly factors and the market backdrop. They may run a seminar, challenge a thesis, and point to public sources. They may not choose the percentages, press submit, or write the rationale in the students’ names. A mentor who is also a scoring participant on another team must recuse from that other team’s factor discussion in the same round.

13. How is the winner determined if balances tie?

Rule 14 awards the Cup to the highest account balance on settlement day. If two or more teams share that balance to the cent, the tie is broken by (1) the higher process-pillar total across six rounds, then (2) the smaller maximum month-to-month drawdown, then (3) the earlier registration timestamp. The organising committee’s announcement is final under Rule 15.

14. Can we short, use leverage, or hold cash above 50%?

No short sales, no borrowed money, no derivatives overlay. Cash is represented by the USD currency fund and is still bound by the 10%–50% band, so a team cannot go to 100% cash except in the automatic month-one default. That constraint is intentional: QGF is a lesson in constructing a diversified portfolio under a mandate, not a lesson in sitting out the market.

15. How does a university register a large cohort?

A faculty coordinator writes to program@qgf.org with an estimated headcount. Students still register as teams; the coordinator receives a cohort dashboard and, at 100 or more registered students, a dedicated ranking and a school certificate after awards. Coordinators are not charged. Deadlines follow the public calendar: registration through 27 February 2026, performance window 1 March–31 August 2026.

16. Where do we go with a rules dispute or a technical failure?

Process questions before a round: support@qgf.org. Alleged platform outages during a submission window should be mailed within two hours of the close, with screenshots. The committee may reopen a window for affected teams if a genuine outage is confirmed; individual “I forgot” cases are not outages. After results are posted, Rule 15 applies: the announced result is final. For a fuller walkthrough of a typical week, read How to Play. For neighbouring competitions we are not affiliated with, see The Field.