The Stock Market Game is an innovative online competition where students are given a fictitious $100,000.00 to invest in stocks and mutual funds.  Students are given short lessons on what companies are, and how stocks work.  Our students typically start with little knowledge of the stock market. 

The students are placed on small groups of 3-4 students and each group decides on some basic rules of teamwork and cooperation (no one buys without group approval). The teachers then give short lessons that explain concepts such as: what a company is, the difference between private (Toys R us, In & Out Burgers) and public companies (GM, Google), and what a subsidiary (Saturn car company) is. The teachers then explain how to identify a company on the stock market and how to track the history of a stock's performance and find analysts opinions of the stock. They then begin buying stock.

2005 was our first year of participation. The girls in the class researched companies that were familiar to them and they eventually bought stock in Claire's (jewelry and other girl stuff). They ignored the rolling of the eyes of the boys and eventually moved into 3rd place for the Bay Area region where they finished. The stock did very well during the holiday season, and the group was invited to the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank to give a short speech.

We now have 4 grades participating and have placed a team in the top three, for 3 straight years. The 7th grade team and a 5th grade team will be attending the Stock Market Game's annual banquet. Attendees will include representatives from Merrill Lynch, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and other corporate sponsors.

HTS Middle School