An Innovative Way to Learn
One tool that has been widely used to introduce young people to the investment world is The Stock Market Game™ program.
Since 1977, the program has been used by educators to improve the learning experience in thousands of classrooms. The program offers a vast library of learning materials correlated to national voluntary and state educational standards in math, business education, economics, English/language arts, technology, social studies, and family and consumer sciences.
Using real Internet research and actual current news, the program teaches and reinforces critical thinking, decision-making skills, cooperation and communication, independent research, as well as saving and investing.
Starting with a virtual cash account of $100,000, students are given the opportunity to create the best-performing portfolio through a live trading simulation. Teams trade common stocks and mutual funds from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the NASDAQ stock market and the American Stock Exchange (AMEX); earn interest on cash balances; pay interest if buying on margin and pay a commission on all trades. More than 10 million students have participated in this program since its inception.
Judy Pinkston, a fifth-grade teacher in the Park Hill, Missouri School District has used The Stock Market Game™ with her gifted students for at least seven years.
During a 10-week period, they follow four company stocks and two mutual funds and become familiar with such skills as how to navigate a stock portfolio and what it takes to calculate gain/loss ratios. At the end of the session each year, some students put their newly acquired knowledge into practice by investing in the stocks they followed through the game. Others have introduced their parents and grandparents to the benefits of investing in the stock market.
“I believe this program teaches students a valuable life skill and instills in them a mindset that understands the benefits of saving and investing over credit cards and debt,” Pinkston said. “In addition, it gives them a strong background in math and teaches them the value of teamwork.”
As part of the program, Pinkston and her students invite investors and financial advisors to the class to share their insights. “The students really enjoy the interaction with adults who are actively involved in the market or who work in that industry,” she continued. “And the adults are pleasantly surprised at how well the students understand and can implement the investment concepts.”
The Stock Market Game™ program, developed by the Foundation for Investor Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and providing learning resources of investors of all ages, is made possible by the support of more than 650 securities firms, combined with essential grassroots support in schools and communities. It is the only stock market simulation supported by the New York Stock Exchange.