HOW IT WORKS
Using a hypothetical investment of $10,000 in the stock market, students allocate the investment to three publicly traded companies; record the closing price of all three stocks on a worksheet every day; prepare a Weekly Investment Summary showing how much their initial investment is worth that day, the gain/loss on each stock, and the net gain or loss; manually calculate percentage return on each stock and then plot the same using MS Excel; manually graph the daily closing price of each stock and then plot the same using MS Excel; research the companies selected and summarize their primary business and financial results; and prepare a final report that includes an Executive Summary (text summary of results and company background) and MS Excel attachments. 

THE STUDENTS
The Stock Market Project was first used with eleventh and twelfth grade classes in the Fall of 2001, and has been revised and used again in the Spring of 2002. The students are very remedial in math and have never been exposed to MS Excel. This project gives them a relevant set of decimal numbers that they want to learn how to manipulate (i.e., they want to know how much they made), and the MS Excel program has significantly improved the capacity for quantitative thought and expression of many of these students. Because the MS Excel program is so powerful, the more remedial students can still feel successful by completing the minimal requirements; while more-advanced students can prepare more-sophisticated schedules and graphs. This project is appropriate for any high school level, and perhaps even for middle school students. 

THE STAFF
Sam Laury spent 20 years in business finance/internal auditing and became a new teacher in September of 2001. 

WHAT YOU NEED 
The most critical need is an ample number of personal computers with the same (i.e., most recent) version of MS Excel. The teacher needs to be proficient enough with MS Excel to train the students.

OVERALL VALUE 
The program is extremely effective in engaging students in a large math project, particularly students who have not previously had much success with math. It starts slowly and builds nicely by the end, when the students are excited to see “who won” on the day they sell their stocks. Using MS Excel has given many students a new and exciting way to manipulate numbers and data.