Students Take Stock of Trading
By Jorge Casuso
It was the final day of trading Friday, and the nervous brokers and their
clients were poring over the morning's stock pages, tallying up the gains
and losses.
Adam Leonard had taken no risks. Betting on established stocks such as
IBM and General Electric, he had seen a more than 20 percent return in
less than eight weeks.
"Mom told me (General Electric) was a pretty good stock because
it rarely goes down too much," Leonard explained, writing a check
out to his broker, who gets a six-percent commission.
Across the floor, his friend has taken a dive and is making more radical
plans. "I'll go to Canada or Mexico," he said, after losing
more than 10 percent on his investment.
While the money isn't real and the plans are make believe, the fourth
grade students in Helen McCullough's class at Franklin Elementary School
are coming about as close as a kid can get to playing the stock market
and living the results.
For seven weeks they have followed the ups and downs of the New York
Stock Exchange, keeping track of the companies they've invested their
fake $1,000 in - many picked Disney and Blockbuster and Best Buy, and,
of course, computer-related companies.
"Stock is like a roller coaster," Neil Carrey, who sits on
the district's Financial Task Force, told the students in a class he has
taught for seven years. "It can keep going up, but it can go down.
A few years ago, a company was worth $62 in the morning, and at night
it closed at $5."
The students, who have seen first hand the effects of rising and plummeting
stock, take it all in. This is more than just theory. In the end, the
fake investments can actually pay off - the winners, who will be announced
next week, will take home $20 gift certificates.
The kids also will take home a wealth of math and business skills. They'll
know how to tally gains and losses, write checks, calculate percentages
and pay when they make a mistake.
The student contemplating fleeing the country took a further loss when
he forgot his calculator and had to rent one from Carrey for $25.
"When you hire people to do stuff for you, you have to pay a fee,"
Carrey explained.
Other students earned as much as $250 for extra credit projects. Several
scanned magazines and newspapers looking for publicly traded companies.
They cut out the ads and placed the stock prices underneath - placing
a value on names they see and hear daily.
"Disney Goes Way Way Up!" wrote Nora Gilbert Hamerling in a
headline at the top of her extra credit report. "Critics Say Nokia
is a Good Buy."
Nora had bet on Quicksilver stock, a clothing brand she had heard was
popular. She also bought up Disney stock ("My brother owns a lot
of Disney, and he's doing real well") and CBS (Her friend across
the floor was selling it).
Arash Ghadooshahy invested in stocks he saw were going up - Best Buy
and Chevron. But then they strated to drop, and Arash scrambled to "sell
as fast as I could," but not before he lost $112.45 after broker's
fees.
"I'd have to sell my bike, my Nintendo games, my very important
stuff, my jewelry," Arash said when asked how he would pay off his
debt.
Hayley Marx netted $150 investing in Best Buy, Disney and AOL, and that
didn't include her extra credit project, which Carrey estimates will pocket
her another $250. Her tips for success:
"You're just lucky, I think," Hayley said.
"For a fourth grade class, this is a pretty sophisticated class,"
Carrey said after the trading had ended and all the brokers' checked written
out.
When all the stocks had been tallied, the class had lost $111.12. The
competing fifth grade class had lost a little over $600.
The kids cheered.
"Learn to be humble winners," Carrey told them.
"Rub it in," said McCullough, who initiated the program to
teach math application 15 years ago. "They rub it in."
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