StockTrak is often used as a group project in investments and finance classes, where two or more students jointly manage a portfolio. Until now, all students in a group would need to share a login – making it impossible to track individual activity and performance.
Enter StockTrak Teams!
How Does It Work?
With a regular StockTrak class, we give the option to let students enter more than one name on their account, which professors can see on their reports. However, this means professors cannot differentiate student activity in a group – this makes it difficult to utilize Assignments and to make sure all students “pull their weight”.
With our new “Teams” feature, each student instead registers their own separate account. Professors can then move students into “Teams” – each team having their own team name. Students still get their own portfolio (and see their individual standings), but all students in a team also have their portfolios aggregated into their Team Portfolio.
Team Portfolios
If a user is in a “team”, they will have access to a Team Portfolio and Team Rankings page. It is important to remember that the team portfolio is an aggregation of each of the team members, not a separate portfolio in and of itself.
The Team Portfolio page shows the combined open positions of all team members in one place, so the team can coordinate their group strategy. This is in addition to each user’s own Open Positions pages, where they can see (and manage) their own individual open positions.
Team Rankings
If a user is in a team, they also have access to the Team Rankings page. The Team Rankings page lists all teams in a session, ranked by the combined percentage return of the team or by combined Sharpe Ratio.
For the combined percentage return, this adds the total current portfolio value of all team members together, and divides by the combined “initial cash” of all team members. This means that teams of different sizes can be ranked against each other consistently, as the ranking is calculated by % return rather than combined portfolio value.
For team Sharpe Ratio, this is calculated by taking the average Sharpe Ratio of all team members who have made at least one trade. It is important to note that we do NOT calculate the “Team Sharpe Ratio” based on the combined team portfolio itself, as this would artificially inflate the Sharpe Ratio of teams where most team members simply held cash for the entire duration of the trading session (thereby reducing the variance of the portfolio itself – no trades means 0 standard deviation).
Using Teams
Instructors with an active session on StockTrak can create and manage teams in their class from the “Administration” item on their main menu, then select “Manage Teams”.
This allows session administrators to create and manage teams within their trading session. You can create or remove teams at any time – our method of team aggregations ensures that you are free to add or remove individual users from any team at any time and retain the integrity of the Team Rankings and Team Portfolios.
If you have any questions about using Teams or need a walkthrough on the best way to utilize this feature for your class, reach out to us via the live chat at the bottom of this page, or contact us at support@stocktrak.com to get a personalized walkthrough!