4 ms·

I grew up in Georgia, and in one class in middle school we played "the stock market game". I didn't care about it. So my 'group', me and two girls who spoke li

I grew up in Georgia, and in one class in middle school we played "the stock market game". I didn't care about it. So my 'group', me and two girls who spoke little English, just put our pretend funds in some diversified blue chips, and then every time the class took time to rebalance their funds, I just read, leaving them where they were because I didn't care. My group got first in the school and got pizza with the ones who got second and third.

julianlam 4y ago
I mean, that sounds like a perfectly sound strategy. It's the whole concept behind the couch potato investment strategy.
- lostcolony 4y ago
  Oh, 100%. I'm not sure exactly what it was trying to teach other than "investing is better than savings" (though given it was just over a semester it could have proven a very different lesson), but it definitely influenced my own passive "throw it in an index fund and forget about it" retirement savings.
slavik81 4y ago
I'm surprised that was a winning strategy. Many of the students in my class dumped everything into penny stocks. Sure, most of them lost their virtual shirts, but my safe investments didn't have the slightest chance of winning against that volatility. If twenty people spin the roulette wheel a few times, one of them is probably going to beat the safe option. It took a while for me to understand where I went wrong. Ultimately, my conclusion was that a short winner-take-all contest rewards very different strategies than the actual market does.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  One of my high school electives included the stock market game. At the time my father had some inside info about several tech stocks that were about to do very nice things for one's portfolio, if one somehow had that inside info. So while everyone else was either just playing around, or spending a lot of time researching, I quietly bid my time. My portfolio ended up being worth more than the next 5 people combined. The only lesson I learned from that is that insider trading is where the profits are at.
- lostcolony 4y ago
  I don't think anyone in my class was interested in playing a numbers game and being more likely to lose individually against someone playing conservatively. Maybe there's a game theory thing that says you ought to if you know everyone else is playing conservatively, but I don't know that people were broadcasting their strategies, either; I just know that when we had periods for people to redistribute their investments, groups huddled and chatted, and made updates on their sheets, and I just read.

julianlam 4y ago

I mean, that sounds like a perfectly sound strategy. It's the whole concept behind the couch potato investment strategy.

lostcolony 4y ago
Oh, 100%. I'm not sure exactly what it was trying to teach other than "investing is better than savings" (though given it was just over a semester it could have proven a very different lesson), but it definitely influenced my own passive "throw it in an index fund and forget about it" retirement savings.

slavik81 4y ago

I'm surprised that was a winning strategy. Many of the students in my class dumped everything into penny stocks. Sure, most of them lost their virtual shirts, but my safe investments didn't have the slightest chance of winning against that volatility. If twenty people spin the roulette wheel a few times, one of them is probably going to beat the safe option. It took a while for me to understand where I went wrong. Ultimately, my conclusion was that a short winner-take-all contest rewards very different strategies than the actual market does.

genocidicbunny 4y ago
One of my high school electives included the stock market game. At the time my father had some inside info about several tech stocks that were about to do very nice things for one's portfolio, if one somehow had that inside info. So while everyone else was either just playing around, or spending a lot of time researching, I quietly bid my time. My portfolio ended up being worth more than the next 5 people combined. The only lesson I learned from that is that insider trading is where the profits are at.
lostcolony 4y ago
I don't think anyone in my class was interested in playing a numbers game and being more likely to lose individually against someone playing conservatively. Maybe there's a game theory thing that says you ought to if you know everyone else is playing conservatively, but I don't know that people were broadcasting their strategies, either; I just know that when we had periods for people to redistribute their investments, groups huddled and chatted, and made updates on their sheets, and I just read.