are finance majors happy finance majors happy finance majors happy – A professor entrusted two groups of high school students with $10,000 to invest in stocks, and they achieved a return that many a mutual fund would envy.
The 17 and 18-year-olds from the Uruguayan-Americano and The British Schools obtained a 42.5% annual return and this Friday they donated all their earnings to charity.
“They succeeded because they understand more about the real economy than Wall Street analysts,” Professor John Younger, a Canadian who worked for 17 years in investment banking in his country and New York and who came to live in Canada, told BBC Mundo. Uruguay two years ago.
The key, according to Younger and the students, was to invest in the companies that produce the products they consume, in addition to betting on some “safe” chips, such as oil companies or other items that appear to be more financially stable.
“I had low expectations and it was a surprise to see how we got it right,” said Heidi Seinfeld. The young people recognized that there is always a share of luck in this, but they attributed their results to the fact that they began to think about current trends.
“Because of our age, we in the market, we understand what consumed and used today, more than the guys who are behind a computer all day,” said Jean Paul Deltas, referring to the investors or operators.
Passionate about the stock market
The young people decided which companies to invest in, and they did so with a New York stockbroker.
First, the young people decided which companies to invest in, and they did so in permanent contact with a New York stockbroker, whom they called to buy and sell when they saw fit. Then the task became a passion and in the mornings, before going to class, they would check the status of the shares to follow the vicissitudes of the market.
“I remember one morning when I got to school a student told me very happy, ‘professor, did you see Apple’s earnings today?’ That showed me that it is worth taking a course like this,” said the professor.
Younger said that some students decided to invest in the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch because it is a brand they like, despite the fact that he warned them that it was a risky bet because the prices of consumer products were falling due to the crisis. international. “When the company published its results last September or October, they far exceeded expectations, so they were right,” said the professor, recounting how his students also gave him a lesson.
emotional roller coaster
For Younger, handling real money added a different dimension to the class and brought them closer to the real world. “They got excited when stocks went up and worried when they went down, and that’s okay, it makes them think about how companies work, why some are successful and others are not, not in an abstract sense but in real life,” he said.
The students recognized that they learned several lessons from this experience, such as being able to take risks and having patience because long-term waiting can bear more fruit.
“We decide to buy share of Research In Motion (RIM), company that make Blackberry’s, because lot of people use them and we thought it was certain thing Professor John Younger elated to have able to teach Economics and Finance in real world.. But at one point we saw that it was company that was lowering our portfolio earning most and we decided to sell half of what we had invested. Soon we realize that if we had waited little longer we would have made more (money) than we did,” Seinfeld explained.
are finance majors happy?
Although the youngsters invested real money, some, like Seinfeld, said they didn’t feel like they were handling $10,000. Although they did feel a responsibility on their shoulders, others, like Lenard Star, never believed that they could lose because they had the support of their teacher.
Younger, the promoter of this idea, feels elated by the fact that he has able to teach Economics and Finance, getting students immersed in the real world.
Through practical work and the excitement of the fluctuations of the market, the students discovered a world that seemed alien and even frightening. “I saw it as a difficult science, now I see that it is a very interesting world and I am even thinking of studying finance,” said Jean Paul Deltas.
Serrano Birches assures that regardless of her professional future, she appreciates the possibility of having learned a lesson “that is useful for everything, for life, it is good to know about these things.”
In addition, the students assured that “it feels good” to know that what they earned will used for a specific work, the construction of new classrooms in a school in the interior of the country. “Next year we are going to see something built and it is good to know that we are contributing to that,” said Birches.
