The Stock Market Game | Illinois Bankers Association

The Stock Market Game explores the fundamentals of personal finance and investing, while practicing content and skills in math, English language arts, economics, social studies, and other subjects. Students build and manage an investment portfolio in a real-world, dynamic marketplace, analyze and make decisions, explore the consequences of their choices, and seek new ways to strategize for success.

• A media-blended project-based learning simulation in which student teams work collaboratively to invest a $100,000 virtual cash account in stocks, mutual funds and bonds.
• A competition between grade 4-12 student teams by region and grade level.
• A robust teacher resource center with lessons, activities and assessments, searchable by subject and grade level and aligned to Illinois and national Common Core Standards.

With The Stock Market Game™ program, students learn core competencies, critical thinking skills and teamwork while engaging your students in real world applications. In building a portfolio, students research, evaluate and make decisions based upon their research. Teams trade equities; earn interest on cash balances; and pay commission on all trades. To better understand stock and overall market performance, they need to know how the economy works, and to calculate their returns they need to do math. Learning is a natural part of the experience.

Illinois banks are encouraged to bring The Stock Market GameTM to their local school districts and partner with them to sponsor the program at no cost to the school.

• Contact your local school to see if they participate and, if they do not, connect them with the SMG  site to register.
• Offer to sponsor teams from your local school (as little as $50 per team).
• Volunteer to help be a mentor or facilitator.
• Volunteer/Register to be a judge for the InvestWrite competition, a highly-successful extension of the SMG program designed to help students sharpen critical thinking skills as they compose essays on investment-related topics. 
• Share your knowledge and expertise with participating classrooms through SIFMA's Invest It Forward program.