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The Manager Challenge is a team competition: a web-based, investment strategy simulation.  It was created to provide an interactive way for investment professionals to test and sharpen their manager selection and monitoring skills in a competitive, yet fun environment.  The Manager Challenge reflects the Brandes Institute’s goal of delivering “education through engagement.” It provides a competitive environment in which participants can sharpen their skills in manager selection and monitoring – while learning valuable “real world” lessons.

Getting Started

Manager Challenge - Getting Started (PDF)

Why compete in the Manager Challenge?

Invest an hour or two of your time in the Manager Challenge, and you can gain experience over the Challenge’s 15-year time span. You can use the Manager Challenge for training or for its competitive aspects.

Competition

In a business noted for its competitive personalities, you can test your skills against your peers (anonymously, if you prefer) to see how you stack up. The Manager Challenge offers competitions divided by peer groups, such as institutional investors, institutional consultants, financial advisors, etc.

Who is eligible to play?

The Manager Challenge is designed for players at all levels of investment sophistication, from experts down to those just starting in the business. 

When are Manager Challenge events scheduled?

For details of 2007 events and the now-completed Institutional Client Tournament 2006, please see the Events page.

What types of Manager Challenge competitions are available?

The Manager Challenge offers competitions divided by peer groups, such as institutional investors, institutional consultants, financial advisors, students, and others.  

The Manager Challenge also may be offered for “intramural” competition – for teams drawn from a single organization that could match colleagues in one office, or in various offices, against each other.

How does the Manager Challenge work?

Conducted online, the Manager Challenge is an investment strategy simulation.  Teams allocate assets among a range of equity and fixed income products offered by fictitious investment managers.  There are multiple objectives:  maximize the portfolio value, manage career risks (by retaining “Career Points”), and exceed liability and policy targets. 

The Manager Challenge is played over a simulated 15-year timeframe, divided into five periods of three years each.  It takes about an hour to play.  Each period can bring new developments – performance fluctuations, product closures, personnel turnover among select managers, and mergers or acquisitions.  Teams can fire existing managers, hire new ones, adjust asset allocations – or do nothing.  A “Leaderboard” shows the running totals for each team participating in the Manager Challenge, including portfolio values relative to the index and current “Career Point” totals.

The winning team in a single Manager Challenge event is the one achieving the highest portfolio value at the close of the final period, after adjusting by the value of career points retained.  (Career points are assigned a value at the start of each event.)

How do we get started?

You’ll need the password for the event you’re entering.  We will email eligible participants ahead of time, with invitations providing the website address, date, and time of the Manager Challenge. 

If you believe you are eligible for a Manager Challenge, and want to participate, but didn’t get an email invitation, please contact us at challengeinfo@brandes.com.

Preparing for the Manager Challenge

To begin the Manager Challenge, you may visit the website and enter your email address and the password.  When you log-in, you’ll be asked if you want to create a team, or become a spectator. Either way, you’ll then have access to the universe of managers and products for your Manager Challenge, and all the details available in the “Manager Profile” section. To create your team, complete the registration page.  Now you can start to build your team’s initial portfolio, ahead of game time.

Note that each team is restricted to one log-in (using the email address you chose when you registered). Other players on your team can “huddle” around your PC to view your team’s home page, or they can log in separately as spectators. They can use their own PC and can research all managers, as well as monitor the Manager Challenge progress on the Leaderboard, but they can’t see details of their team’s portfolio.

What are the “System Requirements” that you’ll need?

Information

For general information about the Manager Challenge, contact us at challengeinfo@brandes.com

The “Challenge helpline,” 858-523-3322, will be open during Manager Challenge events, and is regularly checked for messages at other times.