“Future Titans of Wall Street” Convene at the Zicklin School

The Subotnick Financial Services Center was particularly busy on a recent humid morning in late July. Several dozen young people and a smattering of adults in the Sidney Lirtzman Financial Seminar Hall, just outside the Wasserman Trading Floor, listened as the Zicklin School’s Associate Dean Marios Koufaris welcomed the “new market experts and future titans of Wall Street” to the prize-giving ceremony of the annual High School Stock Market Challenge.

Subotnick Center director Gideon Pell presents first-place winner Sophia Gonzalez with her prize.

The challenge, explained Gideon Pell, the Subotnick Center’s director, was an opportunity for rising high school seniors from across New York City’s five boroughs to spend five weeks learning the basics of investing and trading by managing a virtual portfolio of $500,000 in “play money” in a simulated trading environment.

This year, 33 students representing 17 area high schools took part in the challenge—a significant increase from the 22 who participated last year. Students received introductory financial education classes every Monday for five weeks and spent four weeks trading; they were required to diversify their portfolios by investing in at least five different companies.

Pell noted that the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a key benchmark for investors, barely broke even over the period when students were investing, indicating a “challenging market environment.” Even so, the top-performing two or three students managed to “beat the market,” he added.

All students were required to submit PowerPoint presentations outlining their investment strategies, outcomes, and the learnings they gained from the experience. Pell distributed awards to the top three performers and also gave prizes to two students whose presentations were especially outstanding. “All presentations were of high quality,” he added. “I was impressed with how professional their analyses were.”

Second-place winner Latifa Toure plans to apply to the Zicklin School to study finance.

Sophia Gonzalez, a senior at the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics in East Harlem, won a Fitbit fitness tracker for being the top performer. Latifa Toure, who studies at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx, was the second-highest performer overall, winning a power bank. She said she had joined the challenge because she wanted to pursue a career in finance.

The event also served as a recruitment tool for Baruch and Zicklin. A staffer from undergraduate admissions gave a short presentation on how to apply to Baruch, which, she said, is “the most competitive general program among the CUNYs,” with most accepted students having a high school average in the 90s.

When she learned that there was a fitness center in the basement of the Newman Vertical Campus, Sophia, the Fitbit winner, beamed: “I can’t wait to see if I get accepted here!”

For more information about the Subotnick Financial Services Center, click here.

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