The Future Business Leaders of America are trading stocks in room 201! Mrs. Alvarez, the FBLA advisor, and the students that partake in FBLA have recently joined in on The Stock Market Game. The Stock Market Game is something that can be described as an online simulation of the global capital markets that engages students in the world of economics, investing, and personal finance that prepares millions of students for financially independent futures. Mrs. Alvarez explained, “The Stock Market Game is a fun way for students to learn about investing using $100,000 of virtual money. In addition to learning about various business concepts and possible careers in the field of finance students learn to use tools like PE ratio, Beta & analyst statistics that can help to make solid investment decisions. Our teams compete against other districts while also competing among our own FBLA club members and at the end of the year the team with the most growth wins!” Not only are the participants gaining valuable financial information and experience, their eyes are being opened to many job opportunities that await them after high school.
A stock is a share in the ownership of a company. Stocks represent a claim on the company’s assets and earnings. It allows companies to raise money by offering stock shares and bonds to outside investors. If an investor sticks with their stocks over a long period of time, they will be rewarded with positive financial returns.
The Stock Market Game aids in teaching students real life experiences and ways of understanding our capitalist society. Students are involved in cooperative learning, decision making, researching and applying their reading, writing and math skills. Ms Alverez monitors and facilitates the game as students make their own financial decisions with their teammates. Each group contains 2-3 people and starts off the game with $100,000 in cash. The groups must create a team name and leaderboard tag. Each week, Ms. Alvarez updates the leaderboard so that the students can see their ranking within the club. Students get to experience real life situations like being in debt, and dealing with interest. Students may trade only stocks and mutual funds listed on the American Stock Exchange, Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange that have traded within the last 7 days. A stock is a share in the ownership of a company. Students have invested in companies such as Tesla, Uber, Apple, and Nike, just to name a few. Real Time Game transactions are priced at the market price at the time of entry. All Mutual Fund transactions are treated as real time transactions and priced at the previous day’s closing price. This applies to both End of Day and Real Time games.
The Stock Market Game is a national game played by over 600,000 students per year. The team with the highest equity at the end of trading is recognized as the winner of the games. The winning national team gets a trip to Washington! However, as pointed out by Mrs. Alvarez, “All students who play the SMG are winners due to the knowledge they gain through this hands-on learning experience.”
