My class was part of The Stock Market Game, where schools from all over the USA had teams that picked stocks that they thought would do well, as well as stocks to sell short.

This link describes the program:

http://www.smgww.org/overview.html

My team ended up winning 1st place for all of North Texas. We did well by buying and keeping Amazon and a switch manufacturing company, and by selling short a wind energy company that we liked at first, but was having troubles. A High School team did well with a different approach, buying and holding stocks like John Deere and Harley Davidson.

We ended up with a total equity of $114,876 from our initial $100,000 balance (of pretend money), finishing 1st of 143 teams in North Texas, and outperforming the S&P index by quite a bit.

Because we won for our grade levels, I won $75 and we were invited to a fancy dinner by Merril Lynch, at the top of Thanksgiving Tower, about 48 floors up. It was cool, because we could see all the way to the Texas State Fair grounds, and to other landmarks we're getting to know. There was also a swimming pool on one building that went out over the street.

Here are pictures with my teacher and team mates, and with Riley.

It was a fun night, and now we can recognize the floor we were on from the ground, as we walk around downtown.