A group of schoolchildren from Thame wheeled and dealed their way to a national award in a share dealing performance that was the envy of stockmarket professionals.

The five-strong team of traders from Lord Williams's School, named Bodgers, made a 141 per cent profit from share dealing in seven months, turning a stake of £100,000 into £241,423 between October and April.

Their performance comfortably outstripped that of professional city fund managers, whose average performance over the same period was only four per cent.

The teenage tycoons -- Natalie Schoonraad, 16, Kirsten Rogers, 16, Nicola Baker, 16, Harry Robinson, 18, and Claire Daly, 18 -- will not be spending any of the money though.

Their trades were only made on paper and no real money was invested, but their success was recognised when they won the Student Portfolio Challenge, a schools competition sponsored by the charity, Pro-Share.

The students' economics teacher, Ross Dixon, was the team's only source of advice, other than what they learned from the Internet.

He said: "When you look at the state of pension provision in this country, we like our students to be aware of how markets work. That way they will hopefully avoid the pitfalls of the mis-selling of pensions and understand financial risk in the future."

Harry Robinson, said the team's secret was to chose stocks which had recently declined sharply in value in the hope they would quickly rebound.

"We were looking for companies that had gone down and were most likely to bounce back," he said.

"It's like everything -- you've got to shop around."

Harry said he was unlikely to work in finance in later life.

He said: "I thought of becoming a trader myself, but there's a lot of research and risk involved and I'd rather have a quieter life."