By Mary Gorry
The Saint Mary’s High School Finance Club set the bar high in its inaugural year, placing first out of 195 high school teams in the Long Island Stock Market Game for the 2015–16 academic year.
Club moderator and Social Studies Department Chairperson Jonathan Marron explained that his “goal for the club was to increase financial literacy for the students.” Last fall, he began by introducing the students to different concepts of finance and investing such as the difference between stocks and bonds, how to read a stock ticker, the relationship between the stock market and the economy and terms such as dividends, interest rates and bull and bear markets.
St. Mary’s Finance Club entered four teams into the Long Island division of the year-long Stock Market Game, which ended this year’s run last spring on April 15. The game is an online simulation of the global capital markets, engaging students in fourth through twelfth grade in the world of economics, investing and personal finance. It is organized by The SIFMA Foundation, an independent educational organization dedicated to fostering students with knowledge of the financial markets. Each team was given a virtual $100,000 to invest with the goal of having the most money at the end of the competition.
Then-sophomore Nikolas Costello had “experience in investing and pursued a strategy of short-selling equities that were overbought. He quickly rose in the ranks and assumed first place,” noted Marron. Costello ended up capturing the top spot overall in the competition, beating students on 194 other teams. His Finance Club teammates also had very strong showings—Dayeong Min and Yeji Kim, whose holdings rose between 6-23 percent over the course of the game, came in 25th; Jay Shah and Berick Merise finished 35th thanks to an investment in Under Armour; and the team led by Ciara Warner, with Mateo Choi, Justin Chen, Alexander de Rege and Laura Toscano, “had an amazing final two weeks,” Marron said, “going from 164th to 53rd overall. She made a big bet on Celator Pharma and a big bet against Endo International PLC and both paid off handsomely.”
Marron noted that he’s looking forward to another educational and fun year with the Finance Club. “This academic year we have more club members and more teams entered in both the year-long and semester session competition,” he added. “We have grade-level teams as well this year for the year-long competition: two freshman teams, one sophomore team, one junior team and a senior team.” And of course, Marron noted, all the club members are looking to have top performances in the Stock Market Game again this year. “Nikolas Costello wants to retain his top-place finish!”
