Investing Strategy and Portfolio Builder | Stock Market Simulation Activity

Are you looking to help your students learn more about the stock market, but you need some structured activities to help? Perhaps you are playing The Stock Market Game, Marketwatch, Investopedia, or Personal Finance Lab's stock simulations with your class?

In this activity students are asked to think first about how they want to invest. Do they want to put all their money in at once (lump sum invest) or put it in slowly (dollar cost average)? Do they want to invest in only a couple of companies or diversify over many stock, index funds, mutual funds, and ETF's? Under what conditions will they sell stocks in the future? This last point is the most important to share with students since many adult investors fail to make a plan before they start investing and then make decisions during turbulent and emotional times.

From there they will investigate several companies using the Portfolio Builder activity sheets, before making a final decision about what companies should be added into their stock portfolio. The Portfolio Summary can be used to show what securities the student(s) own and the purchase price if you are using a stock simulation.

This is a great follow up activity to the Compare and Evaluate Stocks Activity or a standalone one to do before doing a Stock Market Simulation.