By Jack Kelly ‘21
These days, 99th and Pulaski is starting to feel like Wall Street.
The Brother Rice Student Council has started an investment club game on MarketWatch.com. With almost 100 current players, it has simulated hundreds of day trades from rookie Crusader investors on a daily basis. The game itself is not only a blast, but it is also a great learning tool.
Senior Quinn Clifford said, “As someone who did not know too much about the stock market before joining the game, the MarketWatch game is a great chance for me to learn by preparing myself for making real trades in the future.”
Senior Frank Cunnea said, “I think the stock market game is one of the more fun things we have at Brother Rice. Mr. Peters introduced the game to Brother Rice and it’s awesome that we can still keep it going. It’s really important for kids to learn how to invest their money and make passive income, and I feel like the stock market game helps kids a lot with that.”
Day trading and “playing the stock market” gained prevalence over the past year when the popular and controversial founder of Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy, opened a brokerage account and began to document his day trading through live streams on his Twitter account over quarantine. The stock market craze reached a fever pitch early on this year when a group of traders on the website Reddit collaborated to buy GameStop stock in record numbers to spite the hedge funds that were shorting the stock. By doing so, the hedge funds lost billions of dollars and regular everyday people profited greatly, encouraging more investors to open accounts and build their portfolios.
If you want to participate in the game, you shouldn’t listen to me unless you plan on starting the game $14 thousand in the hole. Listen to senior Justin Hardiek, who currently leads the game with almost $250 thousand in net profit. He says, “The key to success was getting into GameStop at its peak and praying on its downfall.”
The game is set to end on April 30, 2021. We’ll see if that strategy will carry him to victory over the next few months.
Sources:
https://www.marketwatch.com/game/brother-rice-2021-student-council-game
