Video: West Point Jr. High Students Win 1st Place in Stock Market Game

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WEST POINT, Miss. (WCBI) – Some Junior High School students in West Point are learning the basics of business and investing. Now they’re using their business savvy and coming out on top in the Stock Market Game.

Fifth Street Junior High School in West Point is preparing the next generation of business leaders, teaching students about investing in the stock market.

“It teaches us how life later is going to be when we’re doing or having a business,” says Deja Hightower, a 7th grade member of the Future Business Leaders of America club at Fifth Street Jr. High.

Jon Zarandona is the Advisor for the business club. The five-member, student group placed first out of 46 clubs throughout the state in the Stock Market Game contest.

“The students took a strategy of buying stocks in companies that they know and companies that they thought would do good over the Christmas season. Their strategy worked and they held onto the stocks,” says Zarandona.

The group invested a hypothetical $100,000 and traded stocks within companies like Apple, Walmart, Hibbets and Loews Hardware.

“During the holidays people go and buy tools and stuff for family to build houses and it was increasing in the stock,” says Marquez Woods, a 7th grade member of the winning team.

Students were able to increase their investments by nearly 7%.

“Right now, we’re just exposing them. This is brand new, fresh material to them. So this is an opportunity to teach them something new that later in life, maybe they can pursue finance or maybe they can go in to economics. You know just opening up doors for them,” says Zarandona.

The club will be honored at the Mississippi Council on Economic Education awards ceremony on May 8th in Jackson.

Other clubs in North Mississippi performing well in the Stock Market Game were Pontotoc Middle School, taking 2nd place in the elementary division.
Stokes-Beard Elementary also placed 3rd.