On Friday, December 8, students from Financial Literacy at Chagrin Falls High School participated in the Junior Achievement Stock Market Challenge at the Federal Reserve in downtown Cleveland. The challenge featured over 175 students, making up 50 teams from 10 Northeast Ohio High Schools including West Geauga, University School, North Royalton, Lakewood, Laurel School, Northern Career Institute, Rhodes College and Career Center, Polaris Career Center among others.
The JA Stock Market Challenge is a competitive learning program where high school students learn about the stock market, saving and investing during in-classroom programming, then compete against other high school students in an exciting one-day competition! Chagrin Falls resident and Financial Advisor, Mindy Qua volunteered to run the Junior Achievement curriculum enabling CFHS to participate.
This high energy event is designed to simulate the excitement of a real life trading floor. Teams of 3 or 4 students will learn to work together, leverage each other’s strengths, and use critical thinking skills while analyzing news articles and data during a high stakes and fierce competition. Each team is issued $1,000,000 of “mock stock” and must buy and sell shares in fictitious companies throughout a simulated 60-day trading period. Trading is fast, fun, and furious with a new day starting every 60 seconds! The goal of each team is to achieve the greatest rate of return on investment by the end of the simulated trading session.
For the first time since the Stock Market Challenge began in 2018 in Cleveland, Chagrin Falls had the top team led by Sophomores Jack Keegan, Alec Gresh, Jackson Orazen and Junior Cooper Ryan who finished with an impressive 410% Rate of Return. Their team took home a cash prize of $500 and punched their ticket to the National Stock Market Challenge in the spring, where they will compete against the winners from each state.
