CENTERVILLE -- Over 10 weeks in the fall, three Centerville Elementary School fifth-graders earned almost $33,000 in the stock market.
While their thousands are only hypothetical, the sum made students Jake Maddox, Logan Cowperthwaite and William Catey the regional winners of the Georgia Council on Economic Education’s Stock Market Game.
The trio will be recognized for their success at a luncheon Tuesday at the Georgia Freight Depot in Atlanta.
In the game, each team had a hypothetical $100,000 to invest in companies on the American Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange in a simulated stock market.
Students then monitored the progress of their companies throughout the game to buy and sell stocks.
Of 20 teams in the county, the Centerville team finished the game with $132,989 in their portfolio. Through the game, students learned about the benefits and risks of investing in the stock market, said gifted teacher Paula Peavy.
“The main goal is just to learn about the stock market,” Peavy said. “It’s not so much to win, but to win educationally.”
The team chose to invest in five riskier Nasdaq companies to try to make the most money during the course of the game, compared to investing in stable companies with little growth, according to Catey, the team’s captain.
Before choosing their companies, the students monitored the markets for a few days, Maddox said.
“It definitely pays to be patient,” Maddox said.
Cowperthwaite joined the team midway through the 10 weeks after testing into the gifted program. His presence proved key to their success, according to Catey.
Throughout the course of the game, the team experienced the ups and downs of the stock market, but in the end they came out on top.
“I was really surprised,” Catey said. “We’ve never done this before.”
However, the boys agreed if they were using real money long term, they would invest in a combination of stable, established companies as well as volatile ones that have the potential to make money quickly.
“They really did good understanding how the stock market works, how people make money from the stock market,” said Tonya Maddox, Centerville Elementary principal and Jake Maddox’s mother. “Even for adults it’s hard to understand, and it’s awesome they were able to do that.”
