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We’re excited to announce a shift in leadership in our thrilling journey to transform £500 into £10,000. As we dive into the third week of this innovative financial experiment, one contestant has surged ahead.
Just two weeks ago, we handed £500 each to five diverse experts and our uniquely unpredictable Investing Monkey. The challenge? To see who could grow their modest sum into a substantial £10,000 the fastest.
This competition aims to uncover the most effective strategies for wealth accumulation by comparing the different approaches of our participants.
Antiques expert Gordon Kennedy has taken the lead this week. He achieved this impressive feat by doubling his money with the sale of vintage plant pots and securing a solid profit from other carefully selected items.
Meanwhile, those invested in the stock market, including Simon Lambert and our Investing Monkey, have encountered a volatile week. The markets have been unsteady, reflecting ongoing global uncertainties.
We’d like to remind our readers that this challenge is more of an educational and entertaining endeavor rather than an investment blueprint to follow.
Trying to make quick money is never a smart way to invest. Any profits made in the Race to £10,000 will go to charity. Now, let’s see what our contestants have been up to.
Gordon Kennedy, antiques dealer
Total: £565
Antiques dealer Gordon Kennedy bartered and sold his way to the front of the pack at the Newark Antiques Fair last Thursday.
Last week, Gordon told us he had bought several items related to gardening, as the weather is starting to pick up. This paid off and has already made him a profit.
He sold two plant boxes at the antiques fair for £90, which he’d bought a week earlier for £65. He also doubled his money on a combined botanical album and press book, which came with a pith helmet. This could have been worn by a botanist while they were collecting samples of plants.
The antiques dealer had spent £40 on the two items and sold them for £80, taking his total profit to £65.
Antiques dealer Gordon Kennedy sold two plant boxes at the antiques fair for £90, which he’d bought a week earlier for £65
He currently has £295 in cash, which he plans to spend on more items, alongside £270 worth of antiques.
This includes two cast stone garden lion statues, a florist basket and an unusual Windsor chair.
Gordon says he will be setting up his stall at several popular antiques fairs and flea markets over the next ten days, where he hopes to continue his run of sales.
He will be at Norfolk Antiques Fair on Friday, April 3 and the Malvern Flea & Collectors Fair on Monday, April 6.
Jess Morton, vintage clothes reseller
Total: £562.50
Vintage fashion reseller Jess Morton has also overtaken our crypto guru to take second place.
She has sold two bundles of secondhand clothes – a 4.5kg bundle for £50 at a £18.50 profit and a 7kg bundle for £72, at a profit of £23.
She says: ‘When I manage to get stock really cheap and they’re items I know won’t sell at a large profit, I tend to bundle them up and sell them together. It’s a quick way of selling stock and generating cash.’
These bundles were made up of clothing items in the ‘Y2K’ style, including skirts, shorts, jeans and knitted jumpers. Jess also sold three handbags for £30 on reselling site Whatnot. She had bought each of these for £3.
Vintage fashion reseller Jess Morton has sold a 4.5kg bundle of secondhand clothes for £50, a 7kg bundle for £72 and three handbags for £30
The flurry of sales has made her £62.50 in profit.
However, she still has nearly £450 worth of stock to sell. The full-time clothes reseller spent last week buying up secondhand clothes and sorting through deliveries to list the clothes online.
She ordered around 50 items in total, which she bought from wholesalers who sell in bulk for cheap.
Jess predominantly sells her items of clothing on Vinted but says she will also list them on eBay and Depop to reach more customers.
Will Nutting, crypto trader
Total: £509.73
Will Nutting, who is putting his money into cryptocurrencies in his bid to reach £10,000, has lost his early lead.
The investment writer was up £55 last week but lost most of his early gains in recent days. He is now up just £9.73, placing him in third.
He says: ’All things considered, markets have been tough! But in the Daily Mail’s challenge to turn £500 into £10,000, this [cryptocurrency] is where the real opportunity sits. Markets just haven’t fully caught up yet.’
Will put £100 in Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency. Over the past five days, the price of Bitcoin has risen 2.92pc, however it remains more than 20pc down year to date.
However, most of his money is in a new part of the market that is emerging, where he believes he can make the most gains.
’It’s called DePIN, which stands for decentralised physical infrastructure networks. In simple terms, these are “people-powered networks”, where ordinary people contribute real-world resources, such as internet coverage, computer processing power or smartphone capacity and get paid for it in digital tokens.’
Will put £200 in Helium, a ‘people-powered network’ where ordinary people contribute wireless coverage. He also put £100 into Grass, another people-powered network where users share their unused internet bandwidth.
Investing Monkey, cheap, high-risk stocks
Total: £492.83
It was a tumultuous week for our Investing Monkey, who had made £94 by Friday.
The monkey shot ahead with an investment in Vivakor, a Texas-based company that develops technologies in the oil and gas industry. The stock rose more than 70pc in two days.
However, the chimp has lost all its profits and more, after a number of key investments plummeted when it reinvested its portfolio on Friday.
Operating on the blindfold principle to invest for the monkey, the Money Mail team is using a random number generator website to choose ten penny stocks from a list of the top 100 most traded companies with shares below $5 on Yahoo Finance.
Every Tuesday and Friday, a new portfolio of five stocks is chosen at random.
US tech firm VisionSys AI has lost 76pc since Friday – leaving the monkey £76 out of pocket on that stock alone.
Simon Lambert, shares investor
Total: £470.53
Simon Lambert bought £100 of shares in two new companies which were climbing last week… they immediately stopped rising
This is Money’s Simon Lambert has been wrestling with a falling stock market. He is down £29.47, with his pot now worth £470.53.
He says: ’I’ve been targeting shares making big moves early in the day and companies whose results have been well received.
’Unfortunately, luck hasn’t been going my way. I bought £100 of shares in small UK chemicals firm Synthomer on March 20 but after they went into reverse, I sold out at an £11 loss on March 23.
’A week later, the share price bounced 29pc in a day. If I had sat tight on my initial investment, I would now be up £25 on them.’
Last week, Simon bought £100 of shares in two new companies: recruiter Staffline and asset manager Abrdn, which were both climbing. However, he says they immediately stopped rising after he made the purchase and he is currently down by a few pounds on each.
His most recent buy has been UK oil firm Capricorn Energy, which he hopes should benefit from the high oil price.
Kevin Quigley, sports bettor
Total: £403
Sports bettor Kevin Quigley says his luck has gone from bad to worse.
England conceded a last-minute goal, George Russell failed to win the Japanese Grand Prix and boxer Moses Itauma won in round five (the only round Kevin didn’t have his money on).
He says: ’When your luck is out, your luck is out. But there’s still time to turn this around. I’ll be speaking to some experts I know in the world of boxing to get some good tips for future bets.’
