Stock market game teaches kids and adults lessons on investing

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SALT LAKE CITY — With the stock market experiencing particularly volatile swings of late, being able to claim 12 percent returns in this kind of unpredictable environment would be a laudable achievement for any investor.

Imagine how proud you would be if you could make that claim and you were not even in junior high school yet.

Those are the "virtual" bragging rights for two 11-year-old elementary school students who were among the winners of a statewide competition called the Stock Market Game. Winners were honored during a recent event at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in downtown Salt Lake City.

Sixth-graders Ryan Post and Grant Andrus, both 11, won the elementary school division of the contest that pitted students against each other in a contest to determine who could achieve the best returns on a fictional $100,000 investment over a prescribed period. The pair grew their initial fund to $112,746.

"It was pretty cool," Post said. "But is was also stressful at times."

"I was surprised that we won because in the beginning, we were not doing so swell," Andrus said."You have to learn to take some risks sometimes because things don't always go the way you want them to."

He said that at one point early on, the tandem ranked near the bottom of their category at No. 47, but their strategies and patience paid off, and they were eventually able to recover their virtual losses and won the competition in their age group.

The Stock Market Game invites students to invest the aforementioned hypothetical sum during fall and spring semesters in common stocks on the New York and American Stock Exchanges, and on the NASDAQ market.

Students in three divisions — elementary, junior high/middle and high school — form teams of two to four players and work interactively to research and trade stock.

The competition provides a framework for teaching students about the American economic system, explained Keith Woodwell, director of the Utah Division of Securities. The game is designed for classroom use to help students understand the stock market, the costs and benefits involved in economic decision-making, the sources and uses of capital and other related economic concepts, he said.

The game is currently being used as a teaching exercise of economics within many subject areas and is intended to be a catalyst for further study and interest in the American free enterprise system, he added.

During the 10-week period, teams submit their transactions and receive daily portfolio updates highlighting their current holdings, brokerage fees, margin interest and team ranking. At the end of the period, the top three teams in each region are recognized with awards and prizes. The winners are the teams that have achieved the greatest dollar increase in the market value of their portfolio.

The Stock Market Game has been played statewide for 25 years. During fall semester of 2015, there were 934 teams comprised of more than 2,400 students supervised by 57 teachers in 54 schools throughout Utah.

"The stock market is such an abstract thing for most people," said Dave Hardy, teacher at Creekside Elementary in Kaysville, who supervised the competition at his school. "But once those kids made the connection between the real world and the companies, they (became devoted)."

Hardy's students have won the competition in 10 of the past 11 years. He said the game teaches all the participants valuable academic lessons that will serve them well in their lives ahead.

Among the important lessons is financial literacy, said keynote speaker Kris Liacopoulos, regional general manager for Fidelity Investments.

"(The students) get mathematical concepts and fundamental economic concepts," she said. "The 'magic' in it is that the concepts are really accessible and they get to play — so it's fun!"