Investing has never seemed more fun for the students in Mr. Lynch’s Economics classes after he introduced them to “Investopedia”, a stock simulator that allows students to simulate the experience of investing in stocks.
For the assignment that was started on October 25th, Mr. Lynch gives students a certain amount of money they can invest into whatever stocks they want with the goal of trying to see who can make the most money. When asked what he told his students prior to starting the experiment, Mr. Lynch told Galileo Press that the idea is trying to teach students other ways to invest their wealth. They learned about the federal reserve and inflation. Mr. Lynch makes it clear to his students that purchasing power decreases over time with inflation depending on how bad inflation is how much the federal reserve decides to inflate the currency. Mr. Lynch his students what they will do with the first ten thousand dollars they’d saved up, providing a selection of options.
Mr. Lynch was inspired to create this assignment after the 2008 housing market crash, in which people lost a third of their retirement savings. He believes that the general belief among students is that economics is all about money, but through the assignment, they learn that they could either make money investing or keep it in cash, having the bigger unit picture being what you do with your wealth.
“If you make (x) amount of money, where are you gonna store that wealth? Are you gonna keep it in a bank account? Are you gonna buy a house? Are you gonna buy a car? Are you gonna buy fancy shoes? Or should you maybe put that money into a company that’ll be around for 30 years? I’m not just telling my students that they should invest, I’m giving them alternative things to do with their wealth,” explained Mr. Lynch.
Many of Mr. Lynch’s students have really enjoyed participating in this assignment. “I think it’s [Investopedia] fun and interesting it gives a lot of insight on how to do investing more than I would’ve gotten otherwise and its a non risky way of getting experience with it” says senior Myles D, one of Mr. Lynch’s 2nd period class. But he also warns, “But it’s also making people addicted to gambling which may not be good for their financial health.”
Senior Ashton C., who is Mr. Lynch’s 3rd period, comments,“It’s been pretty good, I haven’t really been doing it that much but like I just bought a lot of safe companies and I’ve made around 2,000 dollars without really touching it, im treating it like long term, I bought stuff the first week and I stopped caring about it but im still making money i’m doing better than the S&P 500, because it lets you see your chart vs that.”
While the Investopedia assignment ends December 8th, Mr. Lynch’s doesn’t want students to be solely focused on monetary wealth. He says,“You could get to my age right now 40 or 50 or 60 and be as rich as possible but you might be unhealthy or un-wealthy in other aspects of your life, so we do this thing about investing on how to get wealthy with monetary but to counter balance that, are you wealthy in your relationships, are you wealthy in your health, are you wealthy with hobbies, after we do this whole thing about investing we also do a little assignment about how you’re wealthy in other aspects of your life.”
