Wednesday, February 5, 2003
|
Wednesday, February 5, 2003 |
Sandy Creek students ride stock market, win region in statewide competitionBy MICHAEL
BOYLAN
Three seniors at Sandy Creek High School got a taste of the world of high finance when they were named the regional winners in the Fall 2002 Stock Market Game coordinated by the Georgia Council on Economic Education. Reece Brown, Andy Clifton and Derek Dean started with a hypothetical $100,000 on Sept. 30 and they were allowed to borrow another $100,000, if they so chose, but it would have to be paid back with interest. Over the next 10 weeks the three students experienced the highs and lows that come with playing the stock market and finished with $155,408. "We lost a lot of money in the last week of the game," said Dean, who explained that the team lost $30,000 due to the poor financial reports of AOL. "It really affected the whole industry." The students were allowed to make one trade a day but could only buy a stock at its closing price at the end of the day. "That was really bad," explained Brown. "We would watch the stock prices fluctuate and know we would have done better if we could have made trades at any time. One stock fluctuated by around $10,000 in a day." Another rule of the game stated that no penny stocks were allowed and each stock had to cost more than $5. Though reluctant to divulge which stocks they owned, the boys let this reporter in on their secrets. They had shares in Navidia, a graphics card chip maker that has a chip in the gaming system XBox, Delta, which they bought when it was low, Anheuser Busch and Dell. "We bought Navidia when it was at $8.70 and it ended at $14," said Clifton. "Though at one point it was up to $19. We also knew that Delta would eventually go back up." The students did a lot of research at Yahoo Finance and found that looking at a company's annual reports, looking at the surrounding industry and world events and thinking about consumer needs were all helpful in determining which stocks to buy and when to sell. They also found that sometimes nothing can prepare you for a fall. At one point, the group was ranked in the top 15 in the state but due to the poor final week finished 40th in the state. Clifton and Dean had a little experience before entering the project. They had a similar experience in their sixth grade class and finished in first place. Their teacher had old newspapers from different weeks and had students buy and follow stocks. This project has the students log on to a web site and monitor and manage their account. Now that they have had a taste, all three students are planning on entering the stock market, though with considerably less of a head start. They credit their economics teacher Mark DeCourcy with encouraging them during the game and offering some advice. Though they entered the game with no real money and finished the game the same way, the students did win one thing, a free lunch at the Georgia Freight Depot in Atlanta on May 6, which also means a day off from school.
|
||