Smarter than a 5th-grader? Wis. kids’ simulated stock portfolio gains 60 percent in 10 weeks

Show me the money: Wis. kids pick stock winners

MILWAUKEE — If your stockbroker isn’t getting you a 60 percent return on your investments, maybe you could turn your portfolio over to some Wisconsin fifth-graders.

Three students at Tullar Elementary School in Neenah won a statewide stock-investment challenge this week by turning $100,000 in pretend money into $160,218 in 10 weeks.

Eleanor Erbach and Raven Wallene, both 11, and Luke Kelley, 10, beat nearly 1,400 other Wisconsin teams, most of which were comprised of high school students.

“It was really exciting,” Kelley said. “I was really surprised at the beginning when we started in first place, and then when we stayed in first place I wasn’t really surprised when we won.”

Their teacher, Tim Hopfensperger, seems to have the Midas touch. It’s the third time since 2007 that he led a fifth-grade team to the state title.

He starts by listing 50 to 60 companies on the chalkboard that he feels have potential. Kids mainly choose from those stocks, although they’re free to invest in others.

Erbach, Kelley and Wallene said they looked at historical performance and pored over quarterly reports. They narrowed their list to eight or nine and held most for the entire 10-week period.

They made their biggest money on two lesser-known stocks, earning about $13,800 on heart monitor maker Cardionet Inc. and roughly $11,630 on plastics maker Westlake Chemical Corp.

“Some people just picked stocks and didn’t really look them up,” Wallene said. “We were looking at how much they made, stock price, earnings.”

The contest ran from Feb. 16 through April 23. In that period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 9.1 percent and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 11 percent. Contest sponsor EconomicsWisconsin, a nonprofit designed to teach students about stock trading, declared the winners on Wednesday.

They get a two-day trip to New York, where they will tour the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, visit popular landmarks and see “The Lion King.”

Hopfensperger’s teams have been so successful that other teachers have asked for explanations for how their high school economics classes lost to fifth-graders, said Melissa Guzman, the EconomicsWisconsin program coordinator.

“All I can say is he just knows what he’s doing. He enjoys teaching,” she said.

Hopfensperger is also a savvy investor himself. He said he has more than doubled his real-world investments in the past 18 months because he bought a number of blue-chip stocks when prices were low in 2008. But he always turns down people who ask him to invest their savings.

“I tell them it’s a lot easier to invest money that’s not real money than real hard-earned cash,” he said. “I don’t think I want to take a chance with other people’s money.”

At least one of the young winners, though, isn’t shy about offering tips.

“Don’t put all your money on one stock,” Wallene said she will tell her parents. “Look into the whole portfolio and see how it’s done over the years. Make sure you look everything up.”

On the Net:

EconomicsWisconsin: www.economicswisconsin.org/

Dinesh Ramde can be reached at dramde(at)ap.org.