If two Washington Irving students follow their instincts, they might just wind up on Wall Street. Brandoll Almonte and Luca Dominguez won first place in the Stock Market Game in May, earning the highest percentage of gains compared to more than 80 students.
Twenty-three teams from the school competed against students from Long Island to Albany over the past six months investing $100,000 of virtual money in the stock market. The game is sponsored by the SIFMA Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes knowledge and understanding of the financial industry to people of all backgrounds.
Fifth-graders from Elisabeth Hickey’s Math Challenge class learned the history of the stock market, the concepts of trading, buying and selling, as well as the ins-and-outs of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ Composite.
The class “purchased” stock in real companies including Google, Amazon and Coca- Cola.
“If the stocks were low and we had a chance to buy, we did,” said Almonte. “If we didn’t make money, we sold half.”
Dominguez said, “I liked selling different stocks and reading about them and predicting.”
Students learned how to read graphs, create presentations, work in teams and compare their portfolios with the S&P 500.
Both Almonte and Dominguez are 10 years old and certainly working on Wall Street is far in the future for them – but this experience started them thinking about investing when they get older.
