The Stock Market Project
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. |