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About the Stock Market Game

What is it?

The Stock Market Game is an example of how various technologies and communication media are mixed and utilized in order to produce an extremely valuable Community Economic Education program. The Game is part of a national economic education effort called ECONOMICS America.

Who is involved?

• Students in grades 4-6, 7-8 and 9-12 are welcome to join.
• Participating teachers become partners in the Community Economic Education effort.
• Parents and guardians are also encouraged to aid in their children's learning experiences.
• Partners, sponsors and supporters of the program who help make this Game possible.

When is it?

• In the Spring of each year, approximately 2000 students in three divisions participate in the Game.
• In Northwest Pennsylvania we have a partnership called Community Economic Education and The Stock Market Game.

How do you start?

• Teachers start the process in motion by enrolling in one of the many orientation workshops.
• These are offered by the sponsor of the Game in Northwest Pennsylvania-The Gannon University Center for Economic Education.
• Teachers receive materials that they will use throughout the 10 week competition.

What do you use?

• It is recommended that teachers use technology to help present material to their students.
• Parents and guardians may also use various technologies and learning methods to help their children explore economics, financial markets and the global economy.

• The phone is used to answer questions both at Gannon and at a free 800 line that is set up at the Stock Market Game Headquarters.
• Computers and computer networks are used extensively to track, evaluate, investigate and communicate throughout the course of the Game.
• The internet is used for much data communications and personal communications, researching individual stocks and keeping track of global occurrences that might affect the performance of a team's portfolio.

Here is a step-by-step example of how a team in an Erie school might be involved in the Stock Market Game:

• The 5 team members may meet in class or out-of-class to discuss the purchases or sales they may make from the New York Stock Exchange; the American Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ exchange.
• Various printed materials will be researched and used such as the local paper, national papers, Standard and Poors Index and other specialized research materials.

The processing center takes the stock quotations from each day from the three stock exchanges used, and then the transactions are matched. A broker's fee of 2% is charged and any purchases on margin (credit) are charged at a rate of 7%. The processing center then "number crunches" all the transactions for each team and prints a copy of the team transactions for that week and updates the value of their holdings.

Last Updated: 7/09