Playing the market
By Andrew Seguin
“Short selling,” “the short cover,” “buying on margin,” “penny stocks,” “the ticker” — a flurry of terms was flying around Harmony Fabrizio’s Upper School finance elective this week as the Stock Market Game began its second year at Chapin. The game allows students to research and practice real investing without the consequences of losing actual greenbacks, bank, bones, bacon or cheddar.
The girls work in pairs and receive an imaginary $100,000 to invest in stocks that are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. They can buy, sell and trade at their whim, with the caveat that they should do some gumshoeing about the companies in which they plan to invest. They track their progress on a Web site that is the main hub for the game. The girls compete against one another and with other schools in the region, so, as Ms. Fabrizio advised, “You might want to keep your investments to yourselves.”
Last year, one team in the class finished in first place, earning themselves a lunch at the New York Stock Exchange and $150 each — a paltry sum compared to the thousands of dollars they had been investing, but actual legal tender.
Before the Stock Market Game was introduced this year, athletic trainer Martin Piñiero spoke to the class about his experience as a day trader in the 1990s. “I try to express that investing in the stock market is very risky,” he said. “I tell [the girls] to look for companies that they enjoy and find interesting because of the large amount of reading that is required to fully research a stock.”
Though it was the first day, the students quickly got to work on Tuesday with laptops and copies of The New York Times that are provided free for 10 weeks as part of the game. Two investing styles emerged almost immediately, as there were cries of “We need to buy a stock right now!” and “Let’s do some research first.” The coming weeks will tell who’s in the black and who’s in the red.
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