Jamshedpur, Aug. 13: All work and no play makes learning boring.

Taking a cue from this idea, XLRI, Jamshedpur, organised a fun game-cum-contest today to give double bonanza to students — practical knowledge of markets, shares and bonds with a dollop of fun.

The contest “Bond Auction Game” was organised by the finance association (FINAX) of the XLRI, Jamshedpur, and focussed mainly on the debt market.

The association mantra is that the best way to learn about debt was to indulge in it.

“It is for the first time that FINAX has taken a step towards making the students understand the key problems of the market and set up an environment to deal with such problems better.

“In trying to do this we created an exact market situation that they would have to handle in their professional careers tomorrow. It is important to have some sort of experience along with theory classes,” said H.K. Pradhan, the instructor of fixed income securities course. The game comprised two teams — with 20 teams acting as primary dealers in the market that bid for a hypothetical figure of Rs 4,000 crore.

On the other hand, there was Pradhan with two more students Vivek Jain and Saurabh Bagrodia, who were mock representatives of the Reserve Bank of India and conducted the whole process.

In real situations, the RBI carries out this process to check liquidity adjustment, known as inflation in layman’s term.

The whole game was conducted over a period of two-day that began on August 12.

It also dealt with “when-issued security” that refers to bonds whose issuance have been announced, but not taken place yet.

The yield base auction at the hypothetical bond market at XLRI, Jamshedpur, witnessed a a fall in the prices of the bond, the conditions that is prevailing in the market today.

“Such events are important as students get the ‘real picture’ of the present market trends. Even playing in some hypothetical market condition helps to understand the matter better.

“Through such events we do receive a better understanding of market problems and situations and we learn to effectively and expeditiously handle the problems,” said Saurabh Bagrodia, the secretary of FINAX.

The results of the market are yet to be decided as there were 60 bids with 240 transactions involving some serious calculations. Though it was a hypothetical market, quotes taken were real ones, made by the RBI in the real market situations.

“FINAX will continue to organise such events and seminars that would help students in the long run. So that, when we leave our institute and join the corporate world, we are ready to face any situation that the market offers. This is just one way of preparing ourselves for what we are going to face outside,” said Bagrodia.