Seniors dip their toes in the stock markets

Finally, Thursday, the day that Westminster’s Economics class trades their stock, came.

One of the teams, "Skilzthatkilz," sold all their stocks except the permanent ones, and then put $60,000 into one stock (BNHNA).  A few hours later, when they checked their stocks, they noticed that they lost about $1,300 on one of their stocks, BIOF, and they lost about $2,000 total. On the other hand, some groups earned over $3,000 from one stock.

Mr. Huddleston’s economics class has started buying stocks from this website called "Simu Stock." It is a free simulation website that allows people to compete against each other. There are four people in a group that work together to buy stocks every Thursday. The teams each got a total of $140,000 in the beginning to start. Out of the $140,000, each person has to put $10,000 in a permanent stock, which is a stock you are not allowed to trade. After each member buys their permanent stock, there is about $100,000 left to buy other stocks each week.

Since "Simu Stock" is free, there are some limits: Sometimes, the stock you want to buy is not available in the program. The money you make or lose does not constantly change; rather, it takes 20 minutes to refresh, and then you get to see where you stand. The worst thing is that sometimes, the changed price does not apply to Simu Stock. So, even if one stock's price is going up, it might not apply to Simu Stock.

However, it is still fun. A lot of seniors are really into this stock game, and some of them check the stocks every hour. Many of them use Yahoo Finance to find stocks, see graphs of 1 year or 5 days, and gather all the information of companies so that they can pick the good stocks that will bring money and glory to their team. Another fun thing is that we do not know who is going to make money since we can only sell stocks on Thursday, and this game goes for few months.

Through this game, we have learned a lot about how the stock market works and all the companies that we have never heard of. It is the best method of education, and should be expanded throughout the whole school.

By Yoha Lee