They don’t even get an allowance, but they’re recognized as the best school-age financial titans in Georgia when it comes to investing and managing money.
Clayton County fifth-graders Jaylen Thompkins, Jacob Thomas and Kenny Chong recently beat more than 3,800 teams of students to win the top spot in the Georgia Stock Market Game. Their rivals came from other public school districts — including high schools with economics classes — private schools and home-school programs.
Not only did they best the competition statewide, they outperformed the U.S. stock market — all while managing their investments during the afterschool program at E.W. Oliver Elementary School in Riverdale.
The trio earned nearly $63,000 on an initial hypothetical investment of $100,000 in the 10-week contest that ended April 8. They amassed a portfolio of $162,945.20, outperforming the U.S. stock market during that period by 58 percent.
Their portfolio consisted mainly of one stock — not the strategy money managers advise for investing real money. They started with three stocks but wound up basically betting the farm on pulp paper company Mercer International. It worked.
“The stats for the stock were very high,” Jacob, 11, explained.
After tracking Mercer’s activity for a while, the team realized “it was capable of doing things it needed to do to raise the stock,” added Jaylen, also 11 and the veteran of the group with three prior contests under his belt.
A team at Gwinnett County’s Parkview High School, which has an economics program, came in second. A team at Mount Zion High School in Carroll County was third. Winners were honored Tuesday at the Georgia Freight Depot in downtown Atlanta.
It was only the fourth time in 31 years an elementary school has won the contest. A team from Oliver Elementary has three of those wins: in 2007, 2008 and this year.
The Oliver team that took the top spot in 2008, when the stock market nosedived, won by short-selling — a complicated method of investing in which shares of a stock are “borrowed” and then sold on the bet that their value will drop by the time repayment is due.
“That’s fantastic,” Doug Roberts, a certified financial planner in Atlanta, said of Oliver Elementary’s latest win and track record. “They’re a pretty sophisticated group of kids. They’ve got a very good method of choosing stocks, whether it’s fundamental or technical.”
Roberts praised the latest team’s $62,000 gain but cautioned that the success of real-life investing comes from diversification.
“It’s an excellent exercise for them to do at that age, but it’s also important to understand that diversification protects the downside.”
Oliver Elementary seems an unlikely incubator of investing savvy. Nearly seven in 10 of its students qualify for free or reduced lunches. Some come from homes where parents struggle to hang onto a paycheck, let alone a portfolio.
On the other hand, Oliver is consistently recognized as a top performer in a school district working its way back to full accreditation after much-publicized governance problems. It has Clayton’s highest attendance rate. Its basketball team is county champ. PTA meetings draw a diverse crowd of Clayton State University faculty members, airport workers and blue-collar types.
“It’s an absolute combination of parental involvement, community support and total school expectation of excellence,” Principal Kathleen Truitt said.
“There’s a constant sense of working toward being the very best. Good is not good enough, “ Truitt said.
Jaylen, Jacob and Kenny, 10, picked up their investing skills as an after-school pastime. The boys were among eight teams of 32 Oliver students who participated in this latest game.
The trio researched stocks before settling on Mercer International and two other less significant stocks. They tracked the stocks daily. Mercer started out at about $8 a share and wound up around $14.
“It’s been quite a good experience learning to trade stocks and learning about investing,” Jaylen said.
The boys’ stock market adviser, Mike Harrell, a physical education teacher, said the game is mainly a way to introduce finance and money management to students who normally would not be exposed.
“A lot of it’s luck and they have fun,” said Harrell, who’s been the adviser since Oliver started entering the stock market game in 2005. “But we’re really striving for financial literacy. I try to clear up a lot of fallacies and give them some faith in the financial system.
“I’m not very involved at all,” he said. “I advise on price ranges to look at and whether they have enough money to buy a stock, but they rely more on research and individual stock websites than they rely on me.”
Harrell has been investing in the stock market personally for about a decade.
“I don’t really follow the strategy it takes to win the stock market competition,” he said. “I’m a safe investor more than a gambler.”
David Martin, executive director of the Georgia Council on Economic Education, which runs the stock market game, credited Harrell’s work and parental involvement as reasons for the elementary school’s three wins in four years.
“Obviously these kids must have good support at home,” Martin said. “I tip my hat to Mike and what he’s done there.”
For Truitt, winning the stock market contest also has a personal side. Her husband teaches English at Parkview High in Gwinnett, which fielded the second-place team. The Truitts’ son attends school there and last fall enrolled in an economics class taught by Parkview’s stock market adviser.
“He [the adviser] found out I was the principal here,” Truitt recalled, a smile creeping across her face. “And he said ‘you didn’t tell me your mom’s principal of that school.”
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