IF your investments are looking a little feeble after the stock market falls of recent years, then a team of AS level Business Studies students from Giggleswick School might have the answer.

The team has won a competition for schools investing a notional figure on the stock exchange. It is the third successive year Giggleswick has entered the competition and their victory follows their second place last year and third place in 2001.

The challenge was to invest £100,000 in a selection of UK companies and to maximise the portfolio value over a seven month period. Competition was stiff, with 19 Yorkshire schools competing.

By the end of the seven month period, Giggleswick £100,000 would have been worth £112,740, a rise of 12.7 per cent. The FTSE all share index rose 3.3 per cent over the same period.

Although stock markets have been consistently falling for the past three years, this year's team built on the success of Giggleswick's previous attempts, and they took an early lead by the end of the first month.

The secret to the team's success was a strong team spirit, with meetings at least weekly but shares checked daily.

"We were constantly looking for new companies to invest in that appeared cheap and therefore represented good value," said Tom York. "This strategy didn't always work, as we bought into Corus at 31p and it dropped to 3p, but fortunately did then rally".

The team tried to spread its risk as much as possible, buying into more companies with any profits made. The best performing share turned out to be the Royal Blue Group, bought at 240p per share and currently trading at 367p.

Paul Adams, from Giggleswick's Department of Business Studies, said: "The race has given the pupils an excellent grasp of the complexities of the stock market and a greater understanding of what drives share prices.

"For the third year we have produced results far better than the stock market average and all the team should be congratulated on this exceptional result, which any professional city broker would be proud of".

The school wins £1,000 and the students CD tokens. The winning team was James Illingworth, Tom York, Sam Jenkins, Max Deitermann, Richard Wilson, David Hassell, Mykhayl Astakhov, Sally Coates.