Congratulations to fifth graders Roman A., William C., Greyson S., and Landon W., on their first-place win for the yearlong session of the Maryland Stock Market Game™! The team's hypothetical portfolio started with $100,000 and ended with $145,538, a 45.5% gain, placing them first out of 940 teams in the state. A second Gilman team — Ian C., Andrew W., and Teddy S. — placed first in the Southern Region, out of 240 teams. Their portfolio saw a 25.9% gain. Both teams attended a ceremony and luncheon on Wednesday, May 15 at Towson University to receive their awards. A big thank you to their advisors, fifth grade teachers Nick Schloeder and Peter Hawkins.

The Maryland Council on Economic Education (MCEE) seeks to equip students with economic and financial literacy so that they can make informed decisions as consumers, investors, and participants in the global economy. One way they work toward this goal is through the Maryland Stock Market Game™, an interdisciplinary educational simulation that teaches children in grades 4–12 about stock markets, the American economic system, and the global economy. Participants develop skills in math, language arts, research, and critical thinking, while building and maintaining a stock portfolio. During the simulation, teams of up to five students manage a hypothetical $100,000 portfolio. Schloeder brought the activity to Gilman 15 years ago.

Thank you to the teams' sponsor, First Financial, for their support.

On behalf of his team, William read the following speech at the ceremony:

Hello, my name is William. It is my honor to be representing our Gilman School team while speaking with you today. We start with a big thank you to the Maryland Council on Economic Education for the opportunity to experiment with stock picking and for this great awards event.

The eight months of the Stock Market Game were fun and challenging for us as individuals and as team members.

Some of the challenges our team faced were:

1. Discussing with our team, classmates, and teachers about complex investing topics.
2. Trying to figure out how to pick companies that fit our investing ideas.
3. Determining if a company is likely to grow in the future, and if they are trading at a good price.
4. Learning how to interpret the news about companies from industries such as biotech, AI, and cloud computing to understand how they make money.
5. And we also learned new tactics to decide when to buy or sell a given stock based on its recent price movements and the overall market.

We made the most money on small- and mid-cap companies. We chose our companies because they seemed to have unique products that were hard for others to copy, such as nVidia (NVDA), NextNav (NN), and Madrigal (MDGL).

Participating in the stock market game has made me realize that doing stock investing is enjoyable. It has given us a lot to think about for our future career paths. I am personally now thinking to get a degree in finance to go along with my degree in computer science.

This Stock Market Game experience was fun, stressful, and rewarding. We wish we had a REAL $47,000 to show for our efforts, but are grateful for the experience and excited to continue putting our methods to the test in our real trading accounts in the years to come.

Thank you for listening!