High school students prove bullish on a bear market
Given a mock $100,000 to invest in the stock market, four boys at New Prague High School quickly decided that conservative tactics weren't for them.

They wanted to win big, and do it fast. So the boys -- members of a team they called Black Thursday -- turned to short selling, a strategy that boils down to profiting when a stock falls, rather than when it rises.

In a series of risky, quick transactions made in the past few weeks, the team pulled it off: When the winners were declared on Monday, the boys' portfolio was valued at $140,000, making them the top Minnesota team in this fall's rendition of the volatile Stock Market Game.

"You can still make money when the market's down," said team member Garrett Smith, a sophomore.

That may have been true for Black Thursday, but it was a wild and mostly disappointing ride this year for most of the several thousand Minnesota students who played the game -- a longstanding competition that teaches kids about investment and financial markets.

Since this year's game began on Sept. 22, the news has been unusually bad on Wall Street: the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 22 percent between that date and the end of play last Friday.

Last year, when the economy was stronger, about 40 percent of the Minnesota teams made gains, said Ryan Tews of BestPrep, a Brooklyn Park-based nonprofit that oversees the game locally. This fall, 11 percent of the teams made money.

Terry Odenthal, the New Prague team's business teacher, said he's proud of his students: They didn't wander blindly into trades, doing their homework before short selling a variety of stocks, including shares in companies in the oil industry. The students did a lot of work during class, said team member Tony Meger, but they were also willing to work overtime. They'd usually eat lunch quickly so they could spend a few minutes checking their investments on a computer in the school library.

LEMAGIE, SARAH. "High school students prove bullish on a bear market." Minneapolis Star Tribune 19 Dec. 2008: 1-1.