OT - Money / Investing Thread (aka financial no stupid questions)

[betarhoalphadelta]

Rebalancing quickly out of tech is something that might be worth doing more slowly after NVDA's earnings report today...

Runners gon' run. 

[OrangeAfroMan]

Did a little stock market activity with my 3rd graders - had each group in each class pick a stock and 'buy' a share.  We checked the price at the same time each day, graphed it for a week, and IDed which group in each class made the most money and which class did so altogether.

Probably not super meaningful to them, but it's the end of the school year and we were talking about different kinds of markets and ways to grow money.

Altogether, they 'made' around $25 for the week.  They chose Youtube, McDonalds, etc....my homeroom was a little buji, picking Louis Vuitton and Rolls Royce, among others.  
The best stocks for the week were Five Below and Minecraft (Microsoft).  It was a good chance to show them how the companies they know are sometimes owned by bigger companies (Youtube > Google > Alphabet).

We also did an activity before that where we simulated 18 days of starting your own company.  The focus was that spending money early on to hire workers and train them (and themselves) was worth it to make more money later on (a dollar to hire, a dollar to train, up to 3x, yielded $3/day for 3 workers for the length of the activity).
They had fun with it and loved having a fat stack of realistic learning money towards the end.  The ones who just wanted to hold on to the money they made wound up with much less than the others.  So that may have opened some of their eyes.

[FearlessF]

being conservative for the next 20 years is silly

if you think you might die in the next 6-12 months - fine - be conservative

[MikeDeTiger]

Did a little stock market activity with my 3rd graders - had each group in each class pick a stock and 'buy' a share.  We checked the price at the same time each day, graphed it for a week, and IDed which group in each class made the most money and which class did so altogether.

Probably not super meaningful to them, but it's the end of the school year and we were talking about different kinds of markets and ways to grow money.

Altogether, they 'made' around $25 for the week.  They chose Youtube, McDonalds, etc....my homeroom was a little buji, picking Louis Vuitton and Rolls Royce, among others. 
The best stocks for the week were Five Below and Minecraft (Microsoft).  It was a good chance to show them how the companies they know are sometimes owned by bigger companies (Youtube > Google > Alphabet).

We also did an activity before that where we simulated 18 days of starting your own company.  The focus was that spending money early on to hire workers and train them (and themselves) was worth it to make more money later on (a dollar to hire, a dollar to train, up to 3x, yielded $3/day for 3 workers for the length of the activity).
They had fun with it and loved having a fat stack of realistic learning money towards the end.  The ones who just wanted to hold on to the money they made wound up with much less than the others.  So that may have opened some of their eyes.

I remember a teacher doing a stock market activity like that with us, but I was in sixth grade.  It was algebra class, of all things.  Don't know how it helped us in algebra, but it was fun.  McDonalds was a popular one for us kids to pick and track back then, too.  

I wish more teachers did things like that with their students, and more consistently through the grade school years.  Maybe it doesn't mean much to 3rd graders--or maybe it does--but if their subsequent teachers would do the same thing you did with them in the upcoming years.....a steady drip of a minor, side activity in class over time.....I bet they'd be in significantly better shape to actively think about their finances and either start a business or better understand the business world and how to leverage that to their advantage.  

[847badgerfan]

I think ours was 6/7th grade.

I chose to buy Telex.

Heh.

[Cincydawg]

I ended up not selling anything, but gave it a once over.   I read an interesting article critical of ETFs.  I’ll find it again maybe, but it was selling other fund types so …..

[OrangeAfroMan]

I think the day-by-day career/company game reached more students. 
I actually had them all just pick a job type and the first 5 days get paid a dollar a day.  Then it was decision time.  Continue with your job, getting a dollar a day or start your own business, which cost $3.  All students could pay to train themselves up to 3x, at one dollar a pop, but adding a dollar a day of earning power (leveling up their value). 
As a company owner, they could to that AND hire people (up to 3) at one dollar each and train them up to 3x each at a dollar a pop.

Some lower kids just kept their job and didn't want to pay any money.  We did it for 18 days, as that was enough to show the difference and that's all I could do and have enough learning money to use, lol. 
By the last couple of days, maxed-out company owners were getting $12-13 per day, blowing the doors off those who just stayed in their job.

The stock market thing was just to kind of introduce the ideas of a share of a company they believe in.  And we got a chance to discuss volatility (the idea, not using that vocabulary), as some stocks barely moved day-to-day and others like youtube would be down $9 one day and up $11 the next.  We talked about stress and risk. 
It was good for what it was.  The higher kids really were into it most.