Zicklin School Hosts Trading Competition for High Schoolers
September 27, 2023If you happened to stop by the Wasserman Trading Floor during July, you might have noticed that it was unusually busy. Those teenagers you spotted looking up stock quotes and comparing P/E ratios? They were participants in a monthlong stock trading competition sponsored by the Subotnick Financial Services Center.
At right: Bruce W. Weber, Willem Kooyker Dean of the Zicklin School
Gideon Pell, a distinguished lecturer in the Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics and the associate director of the Subotnick Center, was the lead organizer of the event. Working with Baruch College’s freshman recruitment team, he enlisted 22 rising seniors from six area high schools.
The competition consisted of five sessions held over a four-week period. Students spent the mornings in half-day tutorials in stock-picking and trading, then used a virtual trading platform (StockTrak) to invest $100,000 in virtual money in stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). StockTrak calculated the teams’ portfolio returns each week. At the end of the four-week period, the three highest-performing teams were pronounced the winners.
On August 3, students and their families and friends gathered for an awards ceremony. Bruce Weber, Willem Kooyker Dean of the Zicklin School, offered welcoming remarks, and winning team members gave short presentations of their work. All participating students received certificates and the winners received Amazon gift cards as prizes.
Pell says the competition will become an annual event. “The students who participated were enthusiastic and motivated, and a number of them hope to apply to Baruch for the fall,” he added. “It certainly whetted their appetite for what the Zicklin School has to offer.”