Another year has begun for EconomicsPennsylvania's Stock Market Game Challenge sponsored by Sunbury Motors and The News-Item. Results will be published on this page each Sunday during the course of the 10-week contest.
Participating school districts are Line Mountain, Mount Carmel Area, Our Lady of Lourdes and Shamokin Area.
The Stock Market Game is an award-winning educational program from EconomicsPennsylvania in which students are given a virtual cash account of $100,000 and are encouraged to create the best-performing portfolio using a live trading simulation. Students work in teams, practicing leadership, organization, negotiation and cooperation as they compete for the top spot. In building a portfolio, students research and evaluate stocks and make investment decisions based on what they've learned.
Teams trade common stocks and mutual funds from the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges; earn interest on cash balances, pay interest if buying on margin, and pay a commission on all trades. To determine why certain stocks perform the way they do or why the broader market has moved up or down, they need to understand how the economy works, and to calculate their returns they need to do the math.
Since 1977, more than 14 million students have participated in The Stock Market Game program.
EconomicsPennsylvania is a not for profit organization specializing in K-12 economic and financial literacy programs across the state. Their overall mission is to promote and encourage understanding of economic and financial concepts through education.
Rankings for this week's trading:
High school - Shamokin Area, $106,884; Line Mountain, $101,077, and Our Lady of Lourdes, $100,547.
Middle school - Shamokin Area, $100,277, and Line Mountain, $99,516.