Published: November 03, 2009 09:45 pm      

Stock market crash course: St. Mary’s students learn ups and downs of stock market through game

In a room filled with middle schoolers at St. Mary’s Catholic School quietly working together on computers, 12-year-old Graham Wood jumped up and screamed with excitement.

He just sold his stock in Wal-Mart.

“It was dropping like a stone,” he explained.

“We were losing money and this way we’ll be able to invest in other stocks and make more money,” said Sommer Dean, 12, who was working with Wood.

Though they are talking about real stocks and real drops and gains, the buying and selling is all pretend and is part of a stock market simulation on the Internet called The Stock Market Game.

At St. Mary’s, students were put into small groups for the 12-week simulation that started earlier this month. Each student uses the school’s new Dell Mini Netbooks follow his or her team, buy and sell stocks and to also follow the market.

Indiana Council for Economic Education ranks each team in its region, which for this area includes 43 groups, and for the entire state, according to Whitnie Payton, technology teacher.

“You hear so much anymore with the economy the way it is, this is good for them to understand what’s going on and to have a clue,” Payton said. Each team started off with $100,000 to invest. When buying stock, they have to purchase at least 100 shares and pay fees to stock brokers. Since this is only a 12-week simulation that follows the real market, Payton said students are learning that they need to make smart decisions, since they can’t wait for a stock to eventually go up.

“We buy low and sell high and we look at what they last traded at,” said 12-year-old Claire Shannon, whose team is ranked fourth in the region. “We have one stock we’ve been risky on, but you have to be risky or you won’t go anywhere.”

Her team has spent about $9,000 and has an equity of $100,243.98.

“We don’t want to spend all our money right away, because the stock market might crash and this goes on until Christmas,” said 11-year-old Lillie Weber, Shannon’s teammate.

Some are still learning the ways.

“I always think that if we buy high and sell low we’ll make more money, but it’s the opposite,” said Dean.

Then Dean and her teammates started getting excited on purchasing another stock that dropped in price by 70 cents to about $33 a share.

However, the 52-week range showed it got as low as $6.71 and as high as $35.78.

Payton intervened to let them know the deal wasn’t the greatest and explained that they needed to look at the trends, not just what happened in the past few days.

“You need to be on the ball when it comes to stocks,” Dean added. “You could lose thousands and not have anything left.”

Students said they enjoyed learning technology along with the market.

“I think it’s a great opportunity,” Wood said. “It prepares us for our future.”

“I like it because for one thing, it’s nice to learn about the stock market and it’ll be good to know when we’re older,” 11-year-old Maresa Kelly said.

Payton has been learning a lot too since she’s had students do the simulation for the past six years. Since then, she’s been on two trips to New York to see the New York Stock Exchange in action.

“The whole thing has opened up the world to me too and I’ve enjoyed it,” she said.

Participating in the stock market game is free to all schools in the state for grades 4-12 in Indiana, due to a variety of funders, according to the Indiana Council for Economic Education.

Donations were used to purchase the Netbooks at St. Mary’s.