The quickest method to make £10k: We’ve given 5 specialists £500 every –  now, they’re going to chase earnings for charity in our distinctive race

It takes money to make money, they say. 

But how easy is it really to grow a pot of cash and what is the best strategy to do it? 

We are putting it to the ultimate test in a ground- breaking experiment called the ‘Race to £10,000’.

Money Mail is giving five contestants £500 each and asking them to turn it into £10,000 – as quickly as they can.

We have hand-picked experts who are at the top of their game, who will use their chosen field – and every trick they know.

By pitting their strategies against each other, we hope to reveal the real road to riches.

One will attempt to seize opportunities in a turbulent stock market, another will buy and sell old clothes that are back in fashion to make a profit. 

Our cryptocurrency expert will put his money behind rising digital coins while a fourth contestant takes a punt at sports betting. Another will rifle through antiques fairs for hidden gems.

We will also have an investment ‘monkey’ competing, who will invest in randomly chosen shares.

Over the coming weeks, we will follow our contestants as they attempt to buy and sell their way to riches. 

Each week, they will tell us where they’ve put their money, why they chose that investment and if it has paid off.

This is a game of high risk, high reward as our players race to the £10,000 finish line. 

What it categorically is NOT is a guide to investing that we expect readers to copy. 

Our players are in a race to make cash, which is never a smart way to invest for the long term. 

Any profits made will go to charity. Now, let our contestants introduce themselves.

Shares investor

Simon Lambert, Publisher, This is Money

Everything I’ve learnt from two decades writing about investing says trying to quickly turn £500 into £10,000 using the stock market is not a wise move.

Investors are told to be patient and play a long game whereas timing the market and chasing big gains is a route to losing money fast.

A 7pc annual return is generally considered good for the stock market. At that rate, it would take 43 years to grow £500 to £10,000. 

It has been made clear to me by my colleague Jess, who is organising the Race to £10,000, that I do not have four decades of time on my side. This means that I’m going to need to trade not invest.

Trading is high octane and involves thinking short term. But traders I’ve spoken to over the years have told me the key to success is having a plan that you stick to. Emotion needs to be removed from the equation.

Despite all those ‘get rich quick’ adverts you may see on social media, trading is not an easy game. 

And with the stock market sinking due to the conflict in the Middle East, making money from trading shares will be even harder.

The FTSE 100 is down 5 per cent from its late February peak and at one point last week 85 of the 100 companies in the index were trading down that day.

But opportunities can present themselves even when markets are down. Volatility brings big price movements and stocks hammered one day can rebound the next.

I plan to look for a few things: stocks that have momentum, as rising share prices often continue; companies whose results beat expectations; and those that chime with the news or current trends.

I will also take a lead from our winner when we ran a Share Picking Game six years ago. He spotted that jumping on shares making a big early morning move up often paid off. I’ll try to pick up some of these and then cash any gains in quickly.

I will spread my risk to avoid a game-threatening loss from any single stock nosediving but across only three to five shares – a much lower number than is usually recommended.

Finally, I need to keep trading costs low and not lose returns to capital gains tax. So I’ll use a tax-free stocks-and-shares Isa account from Trading 212, which has no fees for holding or dealing shares.

Fashion reseller 

Jess Morton, Vintage clothes reseller

People underestimate how much money there is to be made from old clothes that are back in fashion. If you are switched on and know what you are doing, you can make a really big profit.

I run a business called JessVintageRevivals, for which I have been buying and selling vintage clothes full time since quitting my job as a primary school teacher in May last year. In a good month I can make up to £15,000.

My speciality is women’s jeans that are known as ‘Y2k’. This stands for Year 2000 and refers to the fashion trends in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when ultra low-rise jeans were all the rage. A lot of them have really fancy back pockets and the embroidery can be beautiful.

I love looking at these designs. But they also sell well if you know what to look for. I usually make at least three times my money on clothes that I flip, which I mainly sell on online marketplaces such as Vinted, eBay and Depop.

I buy these jeans for £6 to £9 a pair and can sell them on for up to £50 in some cases. 

My approach will be to put 80 per cent of my money into jeans and 20 per cent into other items from the same fashion era, such as Juicy Couture joggers or hoodies.

My game will be to make fast flips – I might slightly underprice items so they sell faster and I can reinvest the money quickly. 

If I do that enough, my profits should snowball. I will predominantly sell the items on Vinted but will also try to list them on eBay and Depop to reach more customers. I know I can turn £500 into £10,000 – the question is how quickly I can do it.

Crypto trader

Will Nutting, Nutstuff Newsletter founder

I think cryptocurrencies are the future of finance and are now a credible alternative to gold and the stock market. 

I will put £100 in Bitcoin, which I believe is as solid as banking apps. In 2024, the US securities regulator, the SEC, recognised Bitcoin as a commodity.

The crypto has had a torrid time of late but it’s interesting to see Bitcoin rising alongside the oil price. 

It’s finally behaving as a way to protect wealth against geopolitical turmoil and as a scarce asset (there is only a finite number of Bitcoin, which should increase its value over time).

But the main reason I think crypto can win this challenge is that an exciting, lucrative new part of the market is emerging.

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.

It flips the traditional model on its head. Instead of giant corporations owning all the infrastructure, thousands of everyday people collectively build the network and share in the rewards.

At first glance, they can appear complicated to anyone who isn’t tech savvy but they are used by millions of people.

Projects such as Helium (which lets people provide wireless coverage), Grass (where users share their unused internet bandwidth) and Acurast (which uses smartphones as secure cloud computers) are good examples of this shift.

Each project has its own cryptocurrency that it pays its users in. My plan is to focus the £500 on areas where there is a strong ‘people power’ story and it is being more widely used.

And I’d love readers to follow along. If I can harness a bit of community momentum as well as market timing, I think that gives me a real shot at being the first to reach £10,000.

Sports bettor

Kevin Quigley, Sports content producer

Over my 15 years as a sports producer, I have been to the biggest and the smallest events of every sport you can think of. 

From the amateur boxing championships to the women’s World Cup finals and the Wimbledon tennis championships.

I’ve seen the best of the best compete so I should be able to pick a win.

The joy of sport is never knowing what the outcome will be – even when the result looks like it has been decided. 

Sports betting is highly risky so I’ve come up with what I think is a winning strategy so that I don’t risk losing it all at once.

Before gambling any money, it’s important to decide how much you are comfortable losing. I’ve decided I don’t want to lose more than £100 a week, at least at the start.

I’ll put £20 or less on the early bets – so this first week, I’ll make at least five bets; and if I win, I’ll place more.

Each weekend, I’ll place a football bet where I pick ten teams to win. This week I’ll be placing bets on the Champions League and the Europa League.

I also plan to use an accumulator once a week to give myself the chance to win big.

An accumulator links two or more bets together. For example, you could bet that a certain team will win a match, what the score will be and who will score the first goal.

The bet pays out only if you get all elements right – but because that’s hard to do, you get a big payout if you get it right. I’ll lean on expert friends in various sports who can steer me.

I’ve got one big advantage over the other players – I can win it all in a day if I play my cards right. I won’t risk the money at the beginning, but if anyone looks close to winning, I will have the knockout hit.

I’m going to be completely analytical when it comes to putting money on the line. I’ll be betting with my mind, not my heart. But there is one thing I will never bet on – I’ll never put money on Tottenham to win. Why? Because they’re rubbish.

Antiques dealer 

Gordon Kennedy, Antiques expert

Buy a new piece of furniture today and it will most likely depreciate in value immediately – and probably end up in landfill one day. 

But buy an antique and, once you are ready to change your interior, you can sell it on and even make a profit.

That’s because once upon a time, furniture was built to last a lifetime. Items were beautifully designed and created with a craftsmanship and materials that can be hard to find today.

Families would hold on to items, such as set of chairs or a dining room table, and even pass them down through generations. They did not throw them away in a few years as they do today.

My skill is seeking out quirky items that can add character to a home or a variety of interior or exterior spaces – such as a pub or restaurant – and even sell to TV set designers.

I fully load my Volkswagen Crafter van to capacity with items I’ve bought throughout the UK, and spend each month travelling around, going from antiques fair to antiques fair selling my wares.

I’ve been an antiques dealer for more than 15 years and hand-pick choice items that I feel have enough clout for people to want them.

My strategy for the race will be to buy two items worth more than £100 and then a variety of pieces for less. I like decorative but also functional items that have something special. I look for quality, design and age – and every week I’ll be able to explain exactly why I selected a certain item.

Antiques have had a difficult few years as families value new items over quality pieces with history and character. But that is where the skill and opportunity lies – finding the hidden gems that are undervalued.

I enjoy finding opportunities in things that are a little damaged or scratched because I think people don’t mind imperfections if you can show they have survived hard times and it gives them so much character.

There’s something special about using an item from a bygone era that has been handled by many different hands. And that’s a quality people are prepared to pay for – if you pick the right pieces.

Meet the random investor monkey they’re up against

 Investing Monkey: Cheap, High-risk stocks 

There is a theory in the investment world – popularised by billionaire investor Warren Buffett – that a monkey throwing darts at a stock market page could score a better return than all but the luckiest professionals.

So, our five experts will not only be battling each other in the race to £10,000 but also a stock market dabbling monkey. The investing monkey (operated by the Money Mail team) will randomly select ten penny stocks from a list of the top 100 most traded companies with shares below $5.

Each Tuesday and Friday morning, it will randomly generate a list of ten stocks to form the basis of its portfolio.

These penny stocks are hugely volatile – so our wild card could pip the contestants to the finish line or crash out early on.

These stocks make for dangerous investments because they are highly speculative and can often lead to rapid losses.

As the companies tend to be much smaller, investors lack public information and they are prone to fraud. 

So while this contestant will monkey around with these in the hope of winning big, approach any of these investments with caution.