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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: PajamaMama on February 25, 2014, 04:06:56 PM

Title: Stock Market Game
Post by: PajamaMama on February 25, 2014, 04:06:56 PM
My daughters doing the stock market game at school. Any suggestions of good sites where she can research stocks?
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: Dr. A on February 25, 2014, 05:36:34 PM
When I play around with individual stocks, I have used finance.yahoo.com. They have a lot of junk news stories in their feeds, but summarize all of the basic info in an easy-to-use format.

Once they pick a few companies they want to learn more about, each company's investor relations  website is a great place to learn more about what they do and how they make their money. Depending on how old they are the annual reports may be really interesting, or overwhelming.

My problem with the school stock market game is that it's set up to encourage super-short-term gambling style trading, so I might encourage them to use it as a chance to learn how different kinds of businesses work, and de-emphasize the "game" part... But that might be tough.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: grantmeaname on February 25, 2014, 07:34:53 PM
Bet it all on red!
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: matchewed on February 25, 2014, 07:55:32 PM
Orlando - http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2013/01/15/cat-beats-professionals-at-stock-picking/

In all seriousness any financial site will give the information needed for any formulas she would use in a class.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: wtjbatman on February 25, 2014, 08:43:57 PM
My only recommendation is tell her to pick stocks that experience a lot of volatility. For purposes of this game that is important. When I played the stock market game at school, my group invested all of our funds in IBM... I think we finished up half a percent by the end. Way to pick the biggest dinosaur of a tech stock available, guys.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: JamesAt15 on February 25, 2014, 09:53:15 PM
My only recommendation is tell her to pick stocks that experience a lot of volatility. For purposes of this game that is important. When I played the stock market game at school, my group invested all of our funds in IBM... I think we finished up half a percent by the end. Way to pick the biggest dinosaur of a tech stock available, guys.

Well, you didn't get fired.

Agreed about the volatility angle. We saw this when we were doing the stock market game here earlier. It's too bad that these games basically encourage people to bet big and try and make a lot of (play) money fast or blow it all with no consequence, whereas you'd really want them to learn to aim for a nice, boring, relatively steady return over 20-40 years.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: soccerluvof4 on February 26, 2014, 04:03:02 AM

For kids the best thing to make it fun is to have the name products they know but try to diversify it. All my kids have done this in school and just have them point out things the like. Maybe direct them towards diversification by picking out a gastation they like i.e. BP or COP or a food chain like Mc Donalds or Panera then maybe a store like Macys  or Kohls for Tech maybe google or Apple or Cisco . There are so many choices so let her pick by what she knows. Its all about learning anyhow

Enter the name or Call letters in either one of these sites.  www.Yahoofinance.com will provide you analyst opinions etc.. but dont take anything to heart. But you will see charts how the stock has done since inception etc..

another one I always keep open is http://www.marketwatch.com/?link=MW_Nav_FP   this works pretty much the same but from either site if you follow the news/headline news it will take you to a world of information.

Just remember while yea it would be great to beat everyone in class its more important she learns the risks and all thats invoved.


Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: Dr. A on February 26, 2014, 07:16:10 AM
My only recommendation is tell her to pick stocks that experience a lot of volatility. For purposes of this game that is important. When I played the stock market game at school, my group invested all of our funds in IBM... I think we finished up half a percent by the end. Way to pick the biggest dinosaur of a tech stock available, guys.

Now that I'm remembering when we did the stock market game in school, it was the late '90s and we bet it all on Dell because my friend's dad said it was a good company. We ended up 1st in the school and would have been 1st in the state if we had used all our margin too (yes, they let us use margin, I was just too risk-averse to use it even on play money).

Those were some good lessons to teach the kids </snark>
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: smedleyb on February 26, 2014, 07:50:17 AM
My daughters doing the stock market game at school. Any suggestions of good sites where she can research stocks?

Since these games are almost always short-term oriented, it makes sense to bet on stocks which are in strong uptrends, the hottest of the hot stocks.   A stock in motion tends to stay in motion, etc.

The Investor's Business Daily 50 (the IBD 50) is a good starting point for finding said stocks.


Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: Allen on February 26, 2014, 12:11:05 PM
You should concentrate it into one pick as well (with massive volatility)

Diversification won't help you do anything but stay middling in this game.  Win big or lose big.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: skyrefuge on February 26, 2014, 12:53:08 PM
Win big or lose big.

And hope, for her sake, that it ends up being the latter. Because winning such a game could easily create in the winner a belief that she actually has some skill in stock-picking, and that's a belief that could be quite costly in her real investing life.

I'd actually be really curious to see data that charts the lifetime investment return of individuals against their finishing position in a school stock-picking game they participated in decades earlier. My hypothesis is that those who won the game would have lower lifetime returns than those who lost the game, because the "winners" would take a longer to realize (if they did at all) that winning a high school game was nothing more than dumb luck, and not an indication of their investing acumen.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: warfreak2 on February 26, 2014, 12:58:52 PM
I definitely think some high schoolers are smart enough to a) figure out that one high-variance all-or-nothing gamble is the best way to win this game, and b) that that strategy only works because of the structure of this particular game.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: the fixer on February 26, 2014, 01:04:38 PM
My recommendation: take Jim Cramer's latest recommendations and do the exact opposite. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-statistical-look-at-jim-cramers-skill-level/
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: soccerluvof4 on February 26, 2014, 02:31:40 PM
^ +1 hahahahaha! you win.... although! if he says something at Market close and you can buy after hours and sell in the morning he does move the market with his cult followers! haha...
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: PajamaMama on February 27, 2014, 05:29:37 AM
Not trying to bump this. Just wanted to say thanks for the help.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: grantmeaname on February 27, 2014, 05:43:35 AM
It may be worthwhile to pick a company they're serious about and analyze the company's most recent annual report. You can do percent changes for revenue and major costs (is profit growing or shrinking? Is that from more revenue, less cost, or one-time items?) and read the management discussion and analysis. If you really wanted to put time into it you could even listen to the company's most recent earnings call with shareholders - the handful that I've heard have been around 20-30 minutes in length so they're pretty manageable.
Title: Re: Stock Market Game
Post by: KingCoin on February 27, 2014, 10:11:27 AM
Might me a good place to start:
http://www.optionistics.com/screener/most-volatile-stocks

I won the "Investor Alley Stock Trading Game" trading small mining stocks which are a wild ride.