BACK • 
Congratulations to Shullsburg Jr. High School!
The final results from the Wisconsin Council on Economic Education are out, and the winners of this year’s stock market game are three seventh-grade girls from Shullsburg Junior High School. They beat out 3,358 various student teams from Wisconsin in the spring semester of the stock market simulation. The contestants, who say they knew nothing about the stock market before this contest (maybe that’s an advantage) turned an imaginary $100,000 into $287,894. The advantage of an imaginary margin account was made available to them. The Wisconsin Council on Economic Education, has been running the stock market game since 1989, and this is only the third time that a junior high school team finished first.
The contest among the various schools was quite close, with Marinette school the winner two years ago, leading the more than 3,300 entrants for most of the ten weeks of the contest, but the Shullsburg girls closed fast and edged them out in the end. For their efforts, the Wisconsin Council on Economic Education will take the winners to New York City for, what else? a tour of the various stock exchanges. The contest is run each semester, and is sponsored by Robert W. Baird, Midwest Express and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among others.
The top ten finishers, in order, are: 1. Shullsburg Junior High School 2. Marinette High School 3. Sparta High School 4. Cudahy High School 5. Portage High School 6. Blessed Sacrament School of La Crosse 7. Two Rivers Washington High School 8. Greendale Middle School 9. Lincoln High School Alma Center 10. Madison West High School. Naturally, all the participants are to be congratulated for their efforts, and a special tip of the hat goes to not only the sponsors of this twice a year contest, but also to the Wisconsin Council on Economic Education which is among organizations in only 17 states to take our children through this exercise.
I think it’s really wonderful that organizations like the Wisconsin Council on Economic Education give our children a taste of the real world. One possible negative observation is that invariably, the kids that win seem to be the day traders, not the buy ‘em and hold ‘em types. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned there, but really, of course, the key to successful investing still remains in long term planning consistent with the risks involved. Obviously, in a contest where the more money you make, the better your chances of winning, the children tended to delve only into more speculative stocks, over short periods of time, using margin, which of course is leverage, and that makes the example a little less beneficial, I think. All in all, I think it’s a great idea.
* * *
Speaking of economics, how are we doing? The answer seems to be, ‘Pretty well, and a lot better than the "gloom and doomers" expected.’ The Gross Domestic Product, the total output of goods and services in our country, was recently revised in the first quarter from 2% down to 1.4%. Still, better than many expected. While interesting, it is, I think, a classic example of how news is really history. We’ll spend the next few weeks crawling all over the first-quarter figures, while, in fact, we have already started the last month of the second quarter. The first-quarter Gross Domestic Product also saw inflation come down a bit from the earlier reported 3.3% down to 3.2%. Not much of a difference, but still in the right direction. Perhaps bigger news is the business inventory figure, which dropped (which is good, since they’re working off inventories) by a whopping 19 billion dollars. That’s the first drop in business inventory since 1991 and the biggest since 1983. The consumer also continued to help the economy, with spending (remember, that’s two-thirds of the Gross Domestic Product right there) up 2.9%. So, as the theory goes, the consumer keeps on spending, businesses work off their inventories, and because of more reasonable interest rates, business starts to buy again and everything starts to pick up. We escape the downturn and are okay. That is the theory. Let’s see if we can put it all together.
The bottom line on all of this; economics statistics may continue to be mixed for another quarter or two, but most people can generally see that by the third or fourth quarter, the economy will start picking up and 2002 should be a better year.
(Tom Butenhoff is a First Vice President with J. E. Liss and Company, Inc.
in Milwaukee. The views are his, and not necessarily those of Liss
Financial Services or the Job Connection/Hiring
Network.)