The Stock Market Game is a 10 week, competitive simulation administered throughout the state by EconomicsWisconsin. Teams are given a hypothetical 100,000 dollars, which they use to invest in the game’s stock exchange to compete against other schools and teams for the highest profit. Winners get a t-shirt, free lunch, a banner for their school and 500 dollars each.

“I find it to be a really fun simulation that’s linked with the New York Stock Exchange, so it’s all live, it’s very realistic, very authentic,” said Evan Schmidt, social studies teacher. “The goal is to teach students how to invest in the stock market, and how that works.”

Teams from Shorewood High School won both the spring and fall games of 2021. A team of five sophomores (Aden Wasserman, August Wang, Johan Bannink, Max Schmaling, and Charlie Burns) placed first out of 256 teams last fall. 

“I think we definitely had a lot of strategy going into it, and every day before the stock market opened we would look into stocks that were high, stocks that were low,” said Max Schmaling, sophomore. “[We looked at] smaller companies, but also we invested in a lot of big companies that kind of held our ground and made us profit.”

This was the fall team’s first game, and they learned a lot from the experience. 

“It was very useful and it really got me into stocks,” said fellow teammate Charlie Burns. “Talking to adults, I’ve heard that it’s a really important part of life, and so it’s pretty cool to get into it early and have such good success on our first run.”

Because the pandemic affected the stock market, the team had to be strategic when it came to what companies they invested in. 

“We also looked into a lot of bio-med stocks, so a lot of these smaller pharmaceutical companies, because they can go from 5 dollars per share all the way up to like 20 dollars per share in just a few days,” said Schmaling. 

Last spring, current seniors Nicholas Bucciarelli, Simon Burnham, and Riju Dey competed and won against 268 teams from across Wisconsin. Although they played again in the fall game, they didn’t win a second time. In both games the team implemented a risky strategy, and it didn’t pay off twice. 

“We were too aggressive,” said Simon Burnham, senior. “We did some investments we shouldn’t have, and one mistake will cost you everything.”

“It’s a game, so you don’t understand the concept of risk as much as you would in the real world, so you’re always skirting that line of being too risky a lot throughout the game,” said team member Riju Dey, “We learned a lot about managing risk, you should always be careful about how much you put into each company.” 

The Stock Market Game continues to be played at SHS, with the next game starting on February 14, 2022. 

“We hope many more teams will participate,” said Burnham, “as we think it’s a really fun and rewarding activity.”