Volume 12, Number 3, 2004
Members of the after-school Business Club at George V. Kirk Middle School in Newark, Del., sit at their computers keying in the URL for the Stock Market Game web site.
The site appears, and more keys click as the youngsters go to the page that lists the standings of the 117 middle school teams throughout Delaware that are playing the hypothetical investment game. Suddenly, one by one, these seventh- and eighth-grade virtual investors begin to realize that team A94--a Kirk Middle School team--is No. 1 in its division
that week.
They can't wait to tell Lee Oliver and Michael DiMaira, two students in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and members of the University's Blue Hen Investment Club, who have been acting as their mentors.
The middle school students' faculty adviser and greatest fan, Jennifer Rhudd, is pleased. "The kids really learn a lot from the Stock Market Game, and they enjoy it," she says. "The University students have been very helpful. They're so knowledgeable about finance that I've even learned a few things."
The Stock Market Game (SMG), administered by the Lerner College's Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship (CEEE), is an educational simulation that introduces students to Wall Street and teaches them about stock markets, the American economic system and the global economy. Teams of up to six students invest a hypothetical $100,000 in a portfolio of common stocks listed on the New York and American stock exchanges and Nasdaq. As the portfolios are tracked by a real-world system, which includes real-time pricing, students experience all aspects of the actual stock market--short selling, margin calls, initial public offerings and much more.
On the UD campus, the Blue Hen Investment Club functions in a similar way, only the money its members invest is real.
Club members began in 1996 with $500,000 seed money approved by the Board of Trustees. Students, under then faculty adviser Donald Puglisi, MBNA America Professor Emeritus of Business, increased their portfolio to more than $1 million when the stock market was at its peak during the late 1990s.
When Puglisi retired, James O'Neill, director of the CEEE, became faculty adviser to the investment club. O'Neill says his knowledge of the Stock Market Game and his new role advising the investment club made the connection between the two UD programs obvious. Now, SMG mentoring is a one-credit course for Blue Hen Investment Club members who participate.
"It seemed the perfect opportunity for these students to share their knowledge and expertise with young children," O'Neill says.
Arlene Hitchens, who coordinates the SMG for the economic education center, says that during the fall semester, 1,016 schoolchildren throughout Delaware participated in the game, forming 206 teams in 19 different schools.
Hitchens says the mentoring program has been a valuable addition to the game. It's proved so popular, she says, that she has a "Request a Mentor" list of teachers who have asked for Blue Hen Investment Club volunteers.
"Investment club students' in-depth background in finance and the securities markets and their practical experience as analysts for the club make these mentors a wonderful resource to SMG students and teachers," Hitchens says. "It adds another real-life dimension to the SMG experience."
DiMaira says he played the Stock Market Game himself in high school. "I saw how much it benefited me," he says. "I thought that I'd like to give back, to take the knowledge I've gained in my finance classes and from the club and simplify it so these younger children can apply it to the game."
On the day the Kirk team has claimed the top SMG slot in the state, Oliver and DiMaira are met with that news as soon as they walk into Rhudd's classroom. The standings are based on the total value of each team's portfolio at a particular time. The UD students say they are pleased but not surprised by the latest results.
"Nike went up, didn't it? That was good for you," DiMaira says to one of the top team's members.
Oliver walks over to another team, where two boys are studying the computer screen to assess how well their stock picks performed over the past week and discussing what they should buy or sell to improve their portfolio, which hasn't performed at top dollar.
"How are we doing?" Oliver asks. "What kind of companies are you looking at now? Biotech?"
"No," one of the youngsters says, "because medicine is kind of up and down."
Oliver looks at their portfolio on the screen. "Well, you might want to take on some more risk," he suggests.
The kids begin researching companies they might want to buy. They go to the SMG web site and click on "institutional research." Then, they ask Oliver and DiMaira for help in looking over and evaluating a particular company's 52-week performance.
Oliver and DiMaira, senior finance majors and Blue Hen investors, say they intend to work with Kirk students again. They attended the school's fall open house to explain SMG to parents who attended, and the club added more members than ever before.
Rhudd and her students say they are impressed with both the mentors and the game itself.
"We're really learning a lot about how to do research," eighth-grader Nick Thompson says.
Seventh-grader Neal Thorpe agrees. "It teaches you how to save and invest your money," he says.
Another SMG participant says he heard about the club from an enthusiastic classmate. "My friend Chelsea was in the club last year, so I decided to join," Kris Hoggard says. "I thought it would be fun to play the game and learn something about the stock market."
"It's a great program," Oliver says. "The kids develop skills they can use later in life--how to diversify, how to pick a stock, what investing means in terms of gains and losses. They're learning what to do with their money before they even have money."
He says his mentoring experience has him thinking about teaching after graduating and then spending some time in the corporate world. "We get as much out of it as the kids do," he says.
More information on the Stock Market Game is available on the web site [www.smgww.org] or by calling the CEEE at (302) 831-2559.
--Barbara Garrison