Oct 2nd Economics: The Stock Market Game

From now until December, our classes will be participating in the Stock Market Game. Students are given a fake amount of money and invest it through the Best Brokers app. The Best Brokers app uses the real up-to-the-minute stock prices. Whichever student’s portfolio increases the most by the end of the game wins a prize. We are about a week and a half into it.

Every Friday, students will update their portfolio in writing. These assignments are worth 5 points toward your formative grade. Given that we’re doing this over several months, keeping your portfolio updated counts for a noticeable percentage of your overall grade. You’ll list the three stocks you have the most money invested in, how many shares you own, the price at purchase, the current buy price and how much you have gained or lost on those stocks. Lastly, you’ll list the overall change in your portfolio’s value.

When you open the app, you’ll be taken to your portfolio page. This will display how much you’re worth overall, how much cash you have and how much stock you own. Scroll down a little until it show all the stocks you own with red and green arrows next to them. Underneath the name of the stock, it will show how many shares you own and what those are worth all together. In the picture to the right, I have $4,834.29 in Apple stock. Look on the list for the three stocks worth the most money. List those on the three lines for the week.

You need to know how much you paid for each stock. If you click on the stock in your portfolio, a menu will come up as it does on the left. Select show stock. Near the top is the Buy Price. Use that to fill in “Current Buy Price” on the sheet. If you scroll all the way to the bottom on this same screen, you’ll see what you originally paid for the stock as you see on the right.

You have to write how much you made or lost on the stock. Technically, this is easy to find on the portfolio screen. If you look at the above right, you can see that I have made +$137.40 on my shares of Apple.

The last thing to fill in is the overall portfolio % gain or loss. This is how much you have made or lost as a whole. From any screen, select the menu button in the upper left part of your screen.  This will display your name, the overall value of your investments and what percentage gain or loss that represents. As you can see from the screen on the left, my portfolio is -0.12%. Write that on your paper.

I collect these papers at the end of the day Friday and score them. Then I return them each following Friday. If you are absent on Friday, please remember to update your portfolio on Monday so you do not miss these points!

I’m very excited by the competition. I can’t wait to see who wins.