Two Cambodian university students won $8,000 on Monday by placing second in a regional stock trading competition, after making it to the final round of the contest ahead of nearly 2,000 other teams from across Southeast Asia.
After winning Cambodia’s national round of the CIMB Asean Stock Challenge last year, Zaman University’s Lymeng Chhim, 21, and Savannarong Koek, 20, lost out in the finals to a team from HELP University Malaysia, which walked off with the $12,000 top prize.
A panel of judges assessed the top teams from Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand on their investment strategies, trading knowledge and analytical skills.
They had been whittled down from 1,972 teams that took part in the initial challenge to secure the highest return on virtual start-up capital of $80,000.
Mr. Chhim and Mr. Koek almost doubled their investment to $151,488 in three weeks of trading. Seang Soleak, head of marketing at CIMB, said that given the tiny size and obscurity of Cambodia’s stock exchange—it has only two listings —the team’s showing was encouraging.
“It was a nice surprise for us, given it was the first time Cambodia participated in the competition and the fact that…Cambodia’s stock market is new and there’s limited information about stock trading,” Mr. Soleak wrote in an email.
