Homework for Wednesday, February 26

Assignment: Stock Purchases

Due Friday, February 27

Greetings!

We are still about a month away from when your child will "get a life," but we are starting our preparations for that moment. As a quick overview, they just got a new job and will be moving their family from wherever they are to someplace in Washington. To prepare for this move, they sold their house and earned $25,000 on the sale. Because we are doing this in math class, they also "decided" to invest that money in the stock market in anticipation of using that money as a down payment on their next house ... yes, they are all taking that risk. In a nutshell. More details will be coming in about a month.

But for now, you can help them by continuing a discussion about what the stock market actually is. While it's not critical they learn or understand everything, there is a base understanding that is good to have. And, for the students who are really curious about it, you can expand on it much more than I have the time (or knowledge) to do in class. In any case, we are having a fun competition to see who can earn the next money over the next two months, so feel free to help as much as they let you! ;-)

The website we are using is Howthemarketworks.com, which is free for us. It's a commonly used classroom resource and is pretty easy to navigate once you click around to see what it offers. They read about stocks the other day, we discussed them in class today, and we looked at some graphs and charts together that the website has, but it's a rudimentary start! 

Tonight: 

*They are to buy shares of stock from two, and only two, different companies. 

*They are to spend between $20,000 and $25,000 total for full credit. 

*The site will not let them spend more than half of their money on one company, so they will need to spend at least $10,000 on each. 

*They are to write this on the worksheet I made (also in their Google classroom) to record these first transactions (see below). The website does the math for them, but they need to copy those numbers into the worksheet to hand in to me. Stocks bought after the market closes will not technically own the stocks until the morning. 

NEXT Thursday, we will discuss diversifying, buying, selling, and other things to consider, but for NOW they must wait until then to buy or sell their stocks once they make these initial purchases. 

As an example, here is the top half of the worksheet filled in for the stock shares I bought:

Starting Investment:  $25,000

Company 1:	Symbol
Apple	Aapl
Current Price/Last Price	Number Purchased
$271.72	45
Total Spent for this Stock	Leftover Cash at this point
$12,200	$12,800

When they complete the second half, they should have less than $5,000 left as cash. 

Everyone NEEDS to buy their stocks by next Monday, March 2. It's just not fair to everyone else if they just sit on their money and aren't at the mercy of the market like the rest of us are ...

So feel free to give all of the advice you want, but also make sure the worksheet is complete!

Happy pretend investing to all. ;-)