Written by Eric Epstein

The Stock Market Game is a new competition that pits students’ investing savvies against one another. e 84 participants will compete for a 50 dollar gi card to a store of the winner’s preference. Second and third place will also win gi cards of their choice. e game’s trading period runs from Feb. 3 to May 18.

Each participant in the game starts o with 100,000 virtual dollars for them to invest how they like. e stocks that the students invest in, however, are real-life stocks with real-life prices. Depending on how each participant’s stocks do in the stock market, their virtual portfolio grows or shrinks accordingly. e winner is simply the one with the most imaginary currency at the end of the trading period.

e Stock Market Game was organized by Student Executive Council trea- surer senior Eli Tannenwald. Tannenwald decided to create the game because he wanted to give students a chance to learn about making investments. “I think that a lot of kids at Gunn have an interest in nance. I was in a position as the treasurer to create an event that would appeal to those kids and let those kids explore their interests,” he said. “I think what’s so great about Gunn is there are so many di erent extracurricular activities, but I think that there was a void there that I’m glad to ll and I’m glad that the kids are having fun.”

Tannenwald hopes that the game will have an impact on students that extends beyond the end date. “Hopefully, kids can come out of it with some experience that they can take into the real world and make some investments of their own,” he said.

As Tannenwald expected, many students who signed up for the game already had exposure to investing and nance, and were looking to build o of their pre- vious experience. “I played a similar stock market game in middle school, and I just thought it was fun to experiment with di erent stocks and things,” junior Sean Yu said. “I’d consider it pretty educational, too. People who have played it, including myself, have a much better sense of the stock market nowadays and how to invest, what the di erent investing terminologies are; for example, I re- cently learned what a ‘short selling’ is, so that’s fun.”

On the other hand, some participants in the Stock Market Game were not familiar with investing and are instead hoping to learn about it. “I signed up for the stock market game because I knew absolutely nothing about stocks and I really wanted to learn,” sophomore Hanna Suh said. “I wanted to learn about stocks because I’m interested in business, and I have always wanted to invest in stocks but I didn’t want to put real money in it, so I thought this was a really good opportunity.”

Because it features virtual currency, the Stock Market Game o ers a unique investing experience where the participants can invest in ways they normally wouldn’t in the real market. “I won’t reveal my picks but I picked two stocks: I bought one, but shorted the other,” senior Mohr Tzur said. “ e stocks are op- posites, so I really just went all-in on one stock, which is really aggressive.”

Yu also made some unconventional acquisitions in the game. “I went for Blackberry, and everyone made fun of me, but it’s up eight percent right now!” Yu said. “I like to pick wild cards that no one else picks, so if they go up, I’m the only one that will be going up.”

Tzur also hopes to gain investing insight from watching how the other par- ticipants invest. “I’m really interested to see the other people who are doing well, and seeing their investment strategies and talking to them to see how they ap- proached it,” he said. “Especially for people who haven’t had experience with stocks, I believe that you can learn from everyone, no matter how experienced they are.”

-Epstein, a junior, is the Business Manager