Looking to start high school investment club, advice?
Hi everyone,
I’m looking to start a high school investment club (maybe call it an investment society, idk?) but not an investment club as you may know it. Obviously since we are high school students it wouldn’t be a pool of money we invest but rather:
-A weekly lesson on stock market / investment concepts, we could rotate this between members and give them all a topic to research and present. About 30 mins.
-Mock stock market on computer for about 30 minutes, most likely using investja to do this.
We would likely have weekly meetings, and occasionally reach out to attempt to gather guest speakers to speak about finance careers with the club.
If you have any suggestions or tips please let me know, thanks in advance!
Cool Idea. Wish you the best of luck trying to get highschoolers to talk about actual strategy. You may even have more success making the club a general business club.
Any idea what that would entail?
Yeah, so just thinking from an ROI on your time invested. I would say since most high schoolers don't know what they want to do. If you market it as a business club and bring in managment and HR and marketing, in addition to finance people you may be able to leverage a large club base and actually get some more professionals to come.
Advice? Don't. Just enjoy your time in school and prepare for the next step. I say this as the Young Republican who started the Young Capitalist Society in my high school. We didn't learn that much, I was a complete geek for doing it, and college adcoms didn't really care.
Planning on going to a school which focuses heavily on ECs, more so than grades. Id like to distinguish myself. What’d you guys do in the young capitalists club?
The same sh*t.
You were censored bro.
Go for it. Sounds kinda gay but all that matters is what u look like on paper right
For the uni apps so it’s alright lol
Taking your username, and ur OP into account this might make you look like a geek at your school. But hey if you are willing to take the social risks involved with starting this then go for it. Point to your leadership skills from starting a club on your college app and it'll def give you some brownie points.
That’s not really a concern for me. I’m pretty lucky in the sense that I’m very academically focused while also remaining a large group of more than normal friends. If people see this as geeky it really doesn’t bother me too much.
A stock market club just isn't that value-adding. Over the long term, it's almost impossible to beat the market net of fees. It's just a really precious that every generation there are high school students who think real investing is buying and selling stocks. That's not what Warren Buffett, et al do--they buy and manage companies, often purchasing controlling interest via the public equity markets. They aren't buying stocks based on a present value calculation.
Do it. I did it and learned a ton from teachers and professionals. Every other week we would have a parent in the industry (IB PE HF VC etc) come in and speak to us about what they do. We also had an annual paper trading competition against other investment clubs at schools in our athletic league. The club is still running yrs after I left and it’s still the largest club on campus. With the help of teachers you can make it very organized.
-Might be more marketable if you call it “wall street club” or something?
-Would think that some portion should be straight teaching finance from an academic standpoint since it is not covered much in HS
-Would think some portion should be going over all of the careers on Wall Street and what those roles entail (both in terms of what they do for a living, and the opportunity / $ / competitiveness to someone going for it)
That's a great idea (+ great for showing passion/interest in college applications). I also founded an investment club when I was in high school, so maybe my $0.02 will be useful here:
Good luck with your club, and use it to further your learning as much as possible! (You can even leverage your role to get in touch with financiers/investors/bankers to speak at one of your meetings, and network with them)
I would do it,
I had a buddy in high school that did...and he had all his friends join and meet once a week during school hours and all we did was dick around.
Went to UPENN and Wharton for Grad...works on the Street now making bank (I wont say a name or what company he is with for privacy reasons).
He told me he included the Investment Club Founding on his college applications.
Hey, I'm in a similar situation. Can you tell me how this worked out for you? I'm in the process of starting a similar club, but I want as much feedback and advice as I can possibly get. Do you have any tips for someone else trying to start a similar club?
I started, in high school, getting interested in stocks and investing - actually started by looking at ATI (prior to them being acquired by AMD - seems like forever ago now) and it went from there.
I think if you focus on the educational piece, purely because you are interested, go for it. I'd recommend ditching the mock stock market portion - focus on educating yourself about industries or companies that interest you. Learn about them. Practice, most importantly, discussing and articulating your ideas as clearly as possible - use it as a toast masters type exercise.
I wouldn't 'market' it to people - I would keep it pretty high level to say the least. I joined something similar in college, and I will tell you that the most valuable piece of it was to articulate my thoughts to a broad group.
I went to a large high school in a northeast suburb. I created a finance club and was successful for a few reasons: 1. Got business professors and finance professionals from the city to come in and give presentations. This was great for business minded students to learn more about different career paths. 2. Got girls to join. Especially attractive ones. Some guys won't want to go to a club learning about finance when all information is online. But guys will come if they find out girls they are interested are attending. The point is to get interest. No business professors or finance professionals will want to present to only 5 high school hardos, but they will present if its packed room with 50-100 students.
Basically you need to have an attraction to bring kids into the club and to get big names to be involved in the club you need a large club.
For 2 be a bit careful. One guy started a club at my college because he hated the existing one and did what you suggested... week 1 went according to plan but we ended up after a week with just a room full of frat guys just talking nonsense and drinking beer who came in blind hopes of seeing someone again
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