After three months of market watching and stock picking there is finally a winner of the Telegraph Fantasy Fund Manager game.
Mike Langton, 56, from Yorkshire, turned £100,000 into £165,000 in his fund, potofgold, to see off almost 15,000 players and take home the £20,000 prize, sponsored by AJ Bell Youinvest.
Mr Langton, a doctor, is a hobbyist when it comes to investment which makes his 65pc return over a period when the FTSE 350 fell by 3pc even more remarkable.
He manages his own pension and Isa but has no professional investment experience, yet he still managed to outmaneuver his rivals by taking an extremely active approach to stock picking.
The game began poorly for Mr Langton. In the first weeks he did not break into the top 10,000 players, but after watching his son storm ahead after buying gold and silver mining stocks he decided to copy him.
“I followed my son into gold stocks near the beginning of the game. Companies like Polymetal International and Petropavlovsk helped me rise up the charts, but I was no where near the top,” he said.
He knew he could not win on the gold and silver trade alone as the leaders went all in on miners and refused to change their portfolios.