004. AIYA Global Hackathon 2025-2026

AIYA Journal

Aug 27

3 min read

The Alchemist Challenge

For the 2025–2026 AIYA Global AI Hackathon, we presented student teams with The Alchemist Challenge. As part of the exercise, participants conducted market research, submitted formal investment theses, and navigated live market shifts with a single optional opportunity to rebalance their allocations mid-week.

A Framework for Market Predictions and Portfolio Allocation

The primary purpose of The Alchemist Challenge was to provide students with a structured framework within which to explore how to make market predictions and build investment portfolios under real-world conditions. While users traditionally default to using AI as a cognitive crutch—relying on passive text generation and accepting uncritical answers—this challenge forced participants to treat AI strictly as a force multiplier for research, context building, and scenario testing. Managing a virtual $1,000,000 portfolio across five core commodities (gold, silver, copper, aluminum, and palladium), teams evaluated market events, generated explicit asset price forecasts, and took complete personal accountability for their strategic reasoning.

Competitors emerged from The Alchemist Challenge with 3 core takeaways:

AI as Force Multiplier, Not Thinking Shortcut: Participants learned to treat AI outputs as a starting point for analysis rather than a final answer—using AI tools to identify market drivers, accelerate research, and build context without abdicating critical thinking or substituting model generation for independent human judgment.
Pricing Real-World Volatility & Market Dynamics: Students gained hands-on experience estimating market movements under conditions of real uncertainty, learning how key commodities respond to economic news, geopolitical shifts, supply scarcity, and downstream industrial demand.
Explicit Reasoning & Strategic Discipline: Beyond initial portfolio construction, participants were required to write formal methodology write-ups explaining their choices, evaluate AI-assisted forecasts for overconfidence, and practice disciplined strategic execution—knowing when to hold their position and when new information truly justified a mid-week rebalance.

6 competitive teams squared off in a closely contested battle for 14 awards across 5 judging categories:

Portfolio Returns: Best Final Portfolio (highest overall return) and Best Initial Portfolio (highest return on initial allocation).
Critical Adjustment: Best Rebalancing Decision (awarded for the greatest performance improvement resulting from a mid-week portfolio adjustment).
Forecasting Accuracy: Best Portfolio Forecast (lowest error on ending portfolio value) and Best Asset Forecasts (lowest percentage error across each of the five individual metals).
Qualitative Analysis: Best Investment Thesis, Best Methodology Write-Up, Most Innovative Strategy, and Most Disciplined Execution.
Overall Championship: Overall Champion (awarded based on an aggregate Olympic-style points tally across all categories).

In the end, Team Squint (representing St. Stephen's College) narrowly edged out Team Brentwood Alchemist(representing Brentwood School) to take first place—tying in total medal count but securing the overall championship lead on total points.

Congratulations to Team Squint for winning Overall Gold on the strength of a dominant operational performance! Squint took top honors across a massive eight of the scoring categories: Best Final Portfolio, Best Initial Portfolio, Best Rebalancing Decision, Best Portfolio Forecast, Best Silver Forecast, Best Palladium Forecast, Best Risk Management, and Best Rebalance Rationale.

Congratulations as well to Team Brentwood Alchemist for securing Overall Silver! Brentwood Alchemist swept three of the four qualitative categories: Best Investment Thesis, Best Methodology Write-Up, and Most Innovative Strategy.

Final Team Standings: