The excitement and anxiety was nearly palpable during the Junior Achievement’s Stock Market Challenge at Urbandale High School on December 17. During this challenge teams of students who are currently taking Personal Finance at UHS were given 500,000 “dollars.” The teams were then tasked with building a portfolio of companies and their stocks. Then during a 30 minute challenge, where every minute equals one day of the market, they were tasked with buying and selling stocks. During this challenge they not only needed to keep an eye on the stock numbers, but also simulated news stories about the companies they were trading on. These stories could positively or negatively affect how the stock market was doing.

The team who won the morning session ended with over $600,000 and the winning team during the afternoon session ended with over $6.5 million! Both of these teams will have the opportunity to go to the Junior Achievement Metro Competition at John Deere Financial, which will feature over 200 local high school students.  What an amazing accomplishment!

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