Team places third in state competition of personal finance game
Students taking a personal finance class at Hazelwood East High School are now successful and seasoned veterans in the world of buying, selling and trading stocks, thanks to their investments in The Stock Market Game (SMG).
Teams from Hazelwood East placed in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the St. Louis regional competition last semester. The first place team from East also placed third in the state out of 991 teams.
The SMG gives students a chance to invest $100,000 of fantasy cash in real-time portfolios, typically online. Over several weeks, students continually keep up with activities of their investments and make decisions on whether to keep or sell stock, in order to make a profit, led by the investment manager.
Teachers who want their students to participate in the SMG must first take a class themselves at A.G. Edwards (one of the SMG sponsors) to learn how to conduct the game. Prior to the starting the game, students must learn basics about stock market symbols and business principals.
“Looking up stock market symbols at first was a little overwhelming for the students,” said Mike Kelly, business education teacher at Hazelwood East. “Using it online helps. It’s less intimidating.”
“At first I thought it was going to be really hard and I was going to go bankrupt,” said Jasmine Bryant, a junior at Hazelwood East who served as investment manager for the 1st place regional team and 3rd place state team.
“We had to pick two to three stocks and invest $100,000.”
Before any investing took place, Kelly’s students conducted research online using sites such as Yahoo, Big Charts, and Fool (The Motley Fool). The St. Louis Post-Dispatch also donated Friday edition newspapers for all of the students participating in the game to use for research. “It’s their best day for financial information in the Post,” Kelly added.
“Everybody on the team brought in ideas,” the investment manager said. Their selection boiled down to a lot of research, much discussion and stock-watching. At some point during the game, Bryant’s team bought, and later sold, stock in a restaurant that always seems to be doing brisk business.
“At first we picked McDonalds, but it wasn’t doing too well so we had to sell it,” she said. “Then we bought Google.”
Jasmine and her fellow investment gurus put their money on Build-a-Bear, Taulx and Google as their winning combination. It worked.
When the Stock Market Game ended, Jasmine’s team at East was in first place in the 31-team St. Louis region with a portfolio of $128,165.03, representing a 25.5 percent return on their investment. Fellow team members reaping a big-money win include sophomores Porsha Bracken and Ashley Brown and senior Kimberly Manning.
“Yes, I was really surprised,” Bryant added.
“They caught on pretty well,” said Mike Kelly, business teacher at Hazelwood East. “They are so interested in the stock market, because they hear so much about what you can make.”
Kelly said the role of the investment manager was a crucial position in the make up of the teams. “It’s hard to pick who is going to be the investment manager because all of the kids did well, Kelly said. “They were all pretty responsible.”
The second place regional team from East consisted of DoMarco Holley, investment manager (11th), Jasmine Goodwin (9th), Melinda Gray (12th) and Tenneka McKinney (12th). Their portfolio was worth $117,939.98 with a 15.27 percent return on their investment.
The third place regional team from East was Chassidy Bell, investment manager (12th), Victor Adetula (11th), Shawnica Andrews (10th) and Takeisha Bryant (12th). The third-ranked team had $116,159.07 in portfolio investments, representing a 13.49 percent return.
Kelly had seven teams participating in the game. Hazelwood East business education department chair Diane Manley also had classes who participated and ranked in the top half of the regional teams, and in the top 100 statewide.
“I think the students gained excellent exposure into how the stock market works—how it goes up and down, and how important it is to research the stocks before you invest in them,” Manley said.
Both teachers enjoyed watching the rankings of their teams of students.
“There were definitely times one team would jump ahead of another team,” Manley said. “If it was a group of friends, they would be pretty excited about jumping ahead in the rankings.”
Participating schools also placing in the top 100 in the state-wide rankings include teams coordinated by Ted Hodgson at Hazelwood Central (27th), and Ed Dafflitto at Hazelwood West Middle School (34th).
Kelly plans for East students to participate in game again next school year. “It was the very first time we did it, so I wanted to find out how well it worked,” he said. “One false move and you can go from second to 200th. I will do it again.”
The first and second ranked teams in the St. Louis region will also be recognized at an awards banquet in May.
“When you consider there were 991 teams from throughout the state, coming anywhere in the top five or ten is a great honor and we came in third,” said Mark Martin, East principal. “It says something about the quality of our kids.”
The personal finance class and The Stock Market Game experience gave Jasmine a new outlook on being savvy in investing and in life. “It taught me how to budget and manage money so I don’t throw my money away,” she reflected. “It taught me how to be more organized.”
