Friday, May. 09, 2008

Fifth-graders take stock in market game to win first place in region

By SANDRA ENGELLAND

When it comes to investing, are you smarter than a fifth-grader?

A group of fifth-graders from Bear Creek Intermediate School recently won first place in the Dallas region of the Stock Market Game. Competing against 340 teams of fourth- and fifth-graders from across North Texas, the three students made more than $25,000 in virtual dollars in 10 weeks.

"We learned about the thrill of investing," said Cole Boggus. "It’s very risky, and you have to make sure you invest in the right thing."

The game is a simulation based on real-time returns from the stock market. Students are given $100,000 in virtual money to invest in at least five different stocks during the game.

They researched stocks on thestreet.com by typing in the ticker symbol. Alex Berner said the site gave them information about the stock’s 10-year performance, current price and what top investors said about it.

After selecting their stocks, teams enter their trades on the game’s Web site, which also tracks their total earnings and how they are doing compared to other teams.

Sponsor Toni Mucker, BCI’s GT specialist, said, "It’s a great way to learn about finances."

Among the stocks in their virtual portfolio were TXU, several other energy companies and Google. The latter was responsible for their ultimate win.

Berner said, "Google went up about $50 in one day."

Mucker said, "The really exciting thing was that the last day really did it for them."

Their investment in Google caused them frustration early on. They even sold it and bought it back the same day when it had bottomed out.

Boggus said that Google subsidiary YouTube caused the stock to plummet in late February after Pakistani leaders blocked worldwide access to YouTube for about two hours.

The leaders were attempting to prevent anyone in Pakistan from viewing the site because of an anti-Islamic video posted online and inadvertently caused the outage.

The students saw the results of news about the economy on the markets. Mucker said, "They would come in talking about the news and paying attention to the financial market and the economy."

The last day of the program, April 17, Google stock soared, helping the team leapfrog several other teams. They also took tips from another BCI team, which placed eighth in the contest, to maximize their earnings.

A fourth-grade team from Eagle Ridge Elementary School placed third in the competition.

On May 12, BCI’s winning team will be honored at the Stock Market Game Awards Dinner in Dallas. Each team member will receive $75.

The students were excited about their foray into finance and said they would consider investing as adults, although it involves a lot of risk and some luck.

Peyton Heidenreiter said, "Our luck was at the end when Google went way up, but there was bad luck when Google crashed."

Boggus said, "There’s a lot of luck, but there’s definitely a lot of strategy, too."

The students successfully employed the "buy low, sell high" strategy to earn a 25 percent return in a short amount of time.

Mucker said she was amazed at how well her students did, especially in the current "very unpredictable" market. "It’s been good exposure to what is happening in real life."

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