Student teams from Ellis Elementary School, 1651 S. Dahlia St., and East High School, 1545 Detroit St., were two of four first-place winners statewide in the Post-News Stock Market Game last month. Approximately 1,000 teams from 120 schools participated in the game, “investing” $100,000 in the stock market.

“It was a difficult time in which to invest considering the down economy, the war in Iraq and various corporate scandals,” said Jill Armstrong, Stock Market Game Coordinator for Post-News Educational Services. “The majority of the teams ended with more than the original $100,000.”

The Ellis Elementary School team of Alexis (Lexi) Santistevan and Nicole (Nicky) Anderson said, “We won by buying companies that were worth a lot of money. We would multiply the shares by 500 and we collected a lot of money. We would repeat that step over and over again and not sell anything. We bought Post-It, iMac, Coca Cola and Toys-R-Us. We bought Post-It because almost every teacher we know has Post-It stickies. We also bought iMac because iMac is a popular computer. We bought Coca Cola and Toys-R-Us because those are both popular companies that do a lot of business.”

The East High School team of Genesa Doss, Tameka Hill and Courtney Marshall said, “Our team purchased Nike, Fannie Mae, Yahoo and E-Bay. We based these buys on research from the daily business section of the newspaper and advice from Internet websites dealing with stock predictions. We looked for stocks that were close to the 52-week low (more potential for growth) and also that had a high P/E ratio. We also tried to keep some of our spending balance in cash. This amount would not be negatively affected by the downward spiral of the stock market overall. We took advantage of being allowed to borrow an additional $100,000 ($200,000 total money to invest). We also tried to avoid paying brokerage fees for additional sales and/or purchases. Basically, we got lucky with our initial stock picks and did not trade any other stocks.”

In the teacher competition, Park Hill Elementary School teachers Paige Dersham and Amy Swartz and student teachers Michael Kelley and Andrew Honald placed second.

For information, contact Martin Doherty at East High School, 303-320-0128, or Jenny Spampinato at Ellis Elementary School, 303-756-8363.