By Molly Seales

At Riverdale Academy, juniors take Business Math with teacher Amanda Cason as one of their elective classes. In this class they learn how to balance checkbooks, how to plan a budget, and many other useful things they will need when they become adults. This year the Business Math Class competed in the fall session of the Stock Market Game.

This competition began on September 27 and ended on December 3. There were 83 teams competing in our region. Teams of students began the competition with $100,000.00, and they traded stocks and mutual funds listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange. Teams were required to make a minimum of three trades.

Riverdale juniors Ben Almond, Tyler Parker, and James Wagoner won first place in our regional competition. At one point, they had a total equity of $118,232.69. They ended the competition with $112,973.25, which gave them the win. I asked James to tell me a little about the competition and he said, “We started the Stock Market Game in late September. Mrs. Amanda let us choose our own teams. My team looked over the stocks and chose to buy some that were currently down. Throughout the game, our stocks began to rise, and we began to see a big profit. We lost a little toward the end, but we still ended up in first place. We enjoyed the Stock Market Game because it taught us about the stock market and how it works. We also enjoyed the break from traditional work.”

Ben, Tyler, and James will be receiving prizes from New York City. This program is free in the state of Louisiana, and you can register for the spring competition at stockmarketgame.org. There are lesson plans, videos, and a teacher resource center available on the website. Students in 4th-12th grade are eligible to compete.  We want to give a huge congratulations to these three guys! Thank you for putting Riverdale on the “Stock Market Map.”

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