|
|
| 
|
Journal entries from Matt, Jennifer and Lanell
My group chose me as our speaker, which made it up to me to explain to the teacher when things went wrong. We went to work researching . . . sort of.
My group began our research by looking at newspaper stock listings. After a few days of research we decided it was too much work -- we knew what companies to invest in anyway, or at least we thought we knew.
Big computer, electric and car companies were foremost on our list. We figured no one ever went wrong buying those stocks, which was true for people who owned them for more than ten years. We only had nine weeks. Soon we learned the difference between high, medium, and low-risk stock. We needed mostly high-risk, but a few low and medium-risk stocks, just in case.
The day we bought our stock, the teacher was absent. Mr. O was our substitute (a stroke of fate? Not really!). We learned that day that Mr. O gambled in the stock market, a lot. We immediately realized we could use this to our advantage. He sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.
Mr. O told us about a drug manufacturer, a medium-risk stock that we should put almost all of our money in. He told us that certain other stocks would sky rocket in the new two months.
We decided to put all of our fake $100,000 in the five stocks he recommended. We figured no one would beat us. We were the only school who had Mr. O.
We checked our stocks in a week later. Boy, were we surprised. A bank stock was the only one that went up. In a week we lost 1,200. Besides all that, we were 32nd place. We reacted quickly. We dumped three of the stocks.
Two weeks later, Mr. O came back. He said our new stocks were not risky enough. We did not want to be known as cowardly investors. So, we once again, listened to Mr. O. We invested in two more stocks he recommended. A week later, our status was 37th place and the drug company stock had gone up nearly $12 per share since we sold it. WOOPS! Oh well, it was too late now.
We had bought and sold quite a bit of stock at this point, which left us quite confused about this whole stock market business. We did not care. We were having fun trying, at least we were not losing real money.
After two days of absence, I came back to school and found my group had sold all of our stocks except for a bio-tech stock, in which they invested all of our money. I did not know if this was some kind of sick joke. I did not really care because as far as I knew it might be a good decision (I was ill). So, we bought ten shares of stock on margin.
At this point we decided to leave the stock alone until the end of the game and see what would happen. As it turned out we were 26th in the state and 55 in the nation. All things considered, I enjoyed playing. My group had a lot of fun playing with stock after it occurred to us that we probably were not going to win the game. We also learned that while Mr. O knows a great deal about the Stock Market, we probably should not have listened to everything he told us to do.
|
In the fall of 1997 our Administrative Information Service class played the Stock Market Game. We picked five stocks, after researching many different companies. There were four other people in my group, which was called Virtual Investors. We learned many different lessons in this project. Besides learning how to spend our money properly, we learned how to work in groups. Coordinating the stock research, the stock tracking, and the report writing was hard. We did not do well in the game because we bought and sold stock to often. We did not have a really good plan on what we should buy and when to sell. The experience of the game was great. The most important thing I learned, was that it is very important for my generation to invest in the Stock Market. I will try to start soon. |
|
When I first heard of the Stock Market game I thought it would be really boring, but it wan not as bad as I thought it would be. We had 5 people in our group. We named our group the Virtual Investors. Besides learning about how to pick stocks to invest in, we learned about the power of compounding. Actually, we learned more about working in a group than about the stock market. During the process of picking our stocks we had a substitute that gave us advice. Little did we know we should not have listened. He did not know what he was talking about. After a few weeks, we got some new stocks that we thought might work. Unfortunately, we found out we did not know how to pick stocks either. The Stock Market Game was anything but boring. Besides learning about the stock market, investing, and team work, I learned how to talk in front of a group, how to use Power Point for presentations, and how to look for information on the Internet. All these skills will be helpful when I go into the real world.
|
Click here to learn more about Bisbee High School....
Do you have a stock market adventure to share? Send us your stories.
The
Stock Market