I run a Maths club after school on Mondays with the express intention NOT to do curriculum related maths. As such, we end up delving into the world of non-routine maths problems as well as doing a surprising amount of maths art. But the real highlight of Maths club is investing money in a stock market simulator. I asked two members of my Maths club to write a shot article about investing in the stock market.
The Stock Market at Maths Club
Our Maths Club meets after school every Monday. We spend time doing maths puzzles and doing maths art. However, our main focus has been trying to make money on the stock market. Pretend money, that is! We each have our own account on a stock market simulator that mirrors the New York Stock Exchange – so the pretend money we invest copies what would have really happened if we had invested real money in the stock market. For those who don’t know, the stock market is a place where you can trade in stocks of a company. If the stocks go up then you make money if the stocks go down you lose money.
We each got $10 000 pretend dollars to invest. We chose to buy stocks by looking at the performance graphs of various well-known companies and deciding if the stocks are going to go up or going down. We decided how much money to spend by instinct at first, but as we learnt more about long term performance of stocks we became more confident in what will go up over the long term. It’s a fun and nerve-wracking experience to see whether are stocks have gone up or down each week, but so far the two of us have made just over $5000 pretend dollars. We look forward to seeing how we did next week!!!
By Esme Shaw and Michelle Samuel
Wishing everyone a happy weekend!
Mr Pretorius
Parent problem of the week
What is the least number of times you can use only the digit 2 to make a sum that gets to the total 23?
Solution to last week’s problem
What is the smallest whole number to contain all the vowels ‘a, e, i, o, u’ as well as the letter ‘y’ when written out in full? One proviso – the word ‘and’ does NOT count as part of the spelling of a number. So ‘one hundred and one’ does NOT count as having the letter ‘a’.
This is a really tricky one because of the constraint of not allowing the word ‘and’ to contribute to the letter ‘a’. Were you able to figure it out? The answer is 6020. Well done if you did!