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Students 'play the market' and win
(by Kathryn A. Burger - July 30, 2008)
Two teams from the
River
Vale
School district recently received awards for their participation in the Foundation for Investor Education’s 2008 Stock Market Gametm. The foundation is a non-profit affiliate of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. PNC Bank sponsored the competition in which more than 5,000 students representing 102 elementary, middle school and high schools in Bergen, Hudson and
Passaic counties competed. A total of 1,484 teams participated in this year’s program.
The Holdrum Middle School Team of Zachary de Stefan, Megan Madden, Samantha Pincus and Daniel White, placed second in their division. The Roberge Team of Samantha Buldo, Regina Leppert and Talia Piretra placed third in the elementary school category.
Meryl Wolf, the Roberge Team’s advisor, explained the rules of the contest. “Starting with a virtual cash account of $100,000 the teams work to create the best-performing portfolio, using a live trading simulation. The students worked together, honing their skills of decision-making, critical thinking, cooperation, negotiation, communication and research.” The contest takes place over several weeks.
Holdrum
School ’s portfolio grew to $126,382.40. Rita Fasano, a math teacher at Holdrum, was the team’s advisor.
Roberge’s portfolio had a value of $113,000.71. The team’s participation was coordinated by Wolf, who is the district’s elementary school Supplemental and Gifted Education teacher.
At an awards ceremony, held at
William
Paterson
University ’s Trading and
Learning
Center in
Wayne , teams were recognized in three divisions and as they accepted their awards, they explained how they chose stocks and made investments. Samantha Buldo, of the Roberge team, said, “Before we started the game, we didn’t know anything about the stock market or the economy. We decided which stocks to buy by thinking of what people would use and stuff we like. We bought Apple stock because of iPhones and iPods; Visa, for the new plum card; Google because a lot of people use the search engine; and Skyworks, because it had really high value. Originally, we had bought PepsiCo but sold it in the middle of the game because it wasn’t doing too well. Visa was a good stock to buy because it was in the top 10 stocks of the game.”
Roberge’s Regina Leppert said, “When we didn’t agree on what to buy, we would vote. It didn’t matter if we didn’t all agree; majority ruled. Some of us discussed it with our parents. It even got us to watch the news, a rare occurrence for kids. I downloaded stock market images on my laptop to further study the stock market. I really enjoyed this program and I might want to be a stock analyst.”
The third team member, Talia Piretra, said, “I learned that making money from stocks isn’t as easy as it sounds. We never thought, in the beginning of the game, that we would get into the top three because we were in 32nd place. We think we were a good team because one of us was a risk-lover, another person was against taking risks, and I was in the middle.”
Edward Weil, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at William Paterson said, “We are proud to help young students advance their financial literacy, which is increasingly important in today’s complex, global economy.”
Michael Brundage, executive vice president and retail banking market manager for PNC Bank in northern
New Jersey , said, “The Stock Market Gametm program provides creative and engaging experiences for students while actively demonstrating the importance of saving and the power of investing.”
Kathleen Floyd, executive director of the foundation, said, “We are delighted to honor these industrious students. The joint effort of PNC and the foundation resulted in students learning the essentials of financial goal setting, market research and smart investing.”
Samantha said, “When we start to work, depending on how much money we make, we think that we would invest some money in the stock market. We really learned a lot about the economy and hope to participate in the stock market game next year.”
Kathryn A. Burger's e-mail address is burger@northjersey.com
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