Each week, countless Britons find themselves deeply engrossed in fine-tuning their fantasy football teams in the Premier League’s popular online game. The decision-making process often involves deliberating over whether to appoint Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah, or Antoine Semenyo as captain, as well as strategizing which new players to bring into the fold to outshine friends and colleagues.

In a similar spirit of competition, a novel virtual trading platform aims to channel this enthusiasm, offering cash incentives while educating Britons about investing. This platform, known as ShareQuest, grants users a virtual budget of £100,000 to construct a stock portfolio, challenging them to outperform others and achieve the highest returns over the course of a week, a month, or even an entire year.

ShareQuest not only provides an opportunity to win monetary prizes based on performance but also serves as a tool for users to grasp the fundamentals of investing. It empowers participants to gain confidence in their financial skills without the pressure of risking real money.

To engage in these competitions, participants can choose from various entry options: an annual contest for £50, a monthly challenge for £5, or a weekly endeavor for just £1. Each format caters to different levels of commitment and competitive spirit, making the platform accessible to a wide audience.

The platform allows users to win cash prizes if they perform well, but also allows them to learn the basics of investing and build confidence without the need to risk their own money. 

Competitions are run yearly, monthly and weekly, with entry costing £50 for the annual contest, £5 per month or £1 per week. 

Half of all entry fees go directly to the prize pools, ShareQuest says – so if the annual competition had 1,000 subscribers, it would offer total winnings of £2,500.

ShareQuest says it will introduce closed user groups, allowing the likes of investment clubs and workplaces to compete against one another.

The stakes, Sharequest says, are low enough that anyone can play, but high enough that people care about winning.

Martin Dobson, chief executive of ShareQuest, told This is Money: ‘There are three factors that affect first time investors: a fear of losing money, a fear of missing out and greed.

‘When you first start investing you aren’t sure what you are doing and the risk if losing money can be high. Then you are hearing about people making money and you are tempted to follow, but you usually miss the boat. 

‘New investors also want to make big returns instead of learning the basics of investing.’

Dobson, who has previously held positions at Natwest, Westhouse Securities and Hobart Capital Markets, added: ‘ShareQuest is a way of attracting people into the stock market without really then realising they’re getting involved.

‘The genius of Fantasy Premier League isn’t that it teaches you football – you already know football, it makes you care about players you’d never normally watch. Suddenly you’re checking how Nottingham Forest’s left-back performed because he’s in your team.’

Dobson says the same applies to the stock market. Building a virtual portfolio, he says, will mean that users take an interest in the companies they hold, and can analyse their fundamentals, price movements and the wider market.

He said: ‘When you’ve got BP in your virtual portfolio, you start paying attention to oil prices. When Tesco is dragging down your league position, you find yourself reading about supermarket margins. 

‘The learning happens almost accidentally – driven by competition rather than obligation.’

ShareQuest offers access to masses of company data, from earnings and share prices to analysis and valuation metrics, for all companies listed on London’s main market and the AIM market.

It also has a community forum where users can discuss investment ideas and ask questions about stocks they are investing in, as well as its own ‘ShareQuest Index’, which tracks the top performing stocks scored on various fundamentals and indicators such as price to earnings and Sharpe ratios.

The platform instils the importance of diversification, with individual stock holdings limited to 10 per cent of the total portfolio for the monthly and yearly competitions, and to 20 per cent for the weekly competitions.  

Users can currently only access London-listed stocks, but Dobson says the focus on the UK market is intentional.

‘I wanted it to be very UK-centric because there is a push for investors to be looking at the UK,’ he said.

‘UK shares currently trade at historic discounts to their American counterparts. The London Stock Exchange offers dividend yields that American indices can only dream of, with household names like Legal & General, British American Tobacco, and National Grid offering yields north of five per cent.’

The launch of the platform comes amid a Government push to promote retail investing to savers, in a bid to create an investing culture in the UK and provide a boost to the UK stock market. 

This includes a cut to the cash Isa allowance to £12,000 from its current £20,000 for those under the age of 65.

Dobson said: ‘By the time those new Isa rules come into force, players will have spent months – perhaps years – learning how the stock market works, which companies they understand, and what kind of investor they want to be.

‘They’ll approach their first stocks and shares Isa not with trepidation, but with confidence.’

Recent figures from Columbia Threadneedle Investments indicate that Britons are finding investing more confusing than ever, with some 61 per cent finding it difficult to understand, compared with 44 per cent ten years ago.

This is despite a surge in the availability and popularity of digital and app-based investment providers over recent years.

The platform launched on 8 December, and the annual ShareQuest starts on 1 January.