Last year’s winning team moved onto high school, but this year’s 8th grade stock pickers at The Dorset School (TDS) continued to top the charts. It’s called the Stock Market Game and in the most recent edition, student teams from TDS claimed both first and second place for the state of Vermont.
“The market is always tough to predict,” says TDS middle school teacher Nate Merrill. “All I can say is that the kids take it seriously and dig deep into the research. For them it’s more than a game.”
Every year, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) conducts an annual contest for elementary, middle and high school students. The goal is to foster greater knowledge of financial markets to children of all ages.
The TDS first place contingent of Elise Hornby, Emma Daley, and Griffin Roberts not only captured the middle school prize, their results bested all competitors in Vermont — including high schools teams. They started the month of January with $100,000 of pretend money and their initial stake grew to $141,000 by the end of April when the game concluded.
“From the start, our focus was to be careful with the money,” says Griffin. “We treated it as if it was real.”
Research also played a major role for the winning trio. “We developed a number of reliable resources, we didn’t use just a few,” says Emma. “We looked for consistent patterns and spotted stocks with ups and downs that looked predictable. Then bought low and sold high.”
The second place team of McKinley Matteson and Matthew Francis kept pace with the frontrunners for most of the contest, but fell back in the final weeks. “Artificial Intelligence worked like magic for us and took off like a rocket in January,” adds McKinley and Matthew. “But then Nvidia went sideways and the other guys did well by sticking with Meta. They deserved to win.”
All the contestants acknowledged that they found themselves hooked by the numbers. “The Stock Market Game provided an app we could check at any time,” says Elise. “When Mr. Merrill noticed we were addicted, they turned off the app for part of the day. After-all, we did have to attend school too.”
(Photo above: The Dorset School's first place team in the Vermont Stock Market Game from left to right - Elise Hornby, Emma Daley, and Griffin Roberts.)
The Dorset School's Matthew Francis (left) and McKinley Matteson finished second in the Vermont Stock Market Game