By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
If the Legacy Financial Investment Challenge at Great Bend High School was a stock, current ACT and Career Coordinator Lacy Wolters, a former business teacher and wealth manager, would have a winner on her hands. Participation in the competition has more than tripled since Wolters first approached Matt Hiss with Legacy Financial about bringing the competition to the school seven years ago. Wolters said 300 students participated in the seventh annual contest that recently wrapped up.
"I thought that would be a really good opportunity to allow students to practice what they're learning in class for those of them who were in my class," she said. "For students not in the class, I thought that would be a good way to introduce them to investing, get them excited, and allow them to see the types of classes they could take here."
Robin Linsner has since taken over Wolter's business classes but the competition remains the same. Using a free platform called "How the Market Works," students are given $100,000 virtual cash to invest at their discretion. The platform uses real-time stocks and prices. Wolters thanked Matt and Dena Hiss at Legacy Financial for sponsoring the growing event.
"Matt comes in and speaks with the investment students, as well," she said. "It's putting what they're learning in the classroom into practice, then hearing from an investment professional, I think, really furthers their learning. For a lot of our students, this competition is really their first time even hearing of investing. It's been neat to see the program grow."
This year's student winners were, Caden Guesnier in first, Thomas Armatys in second, and Griffin King in third. Faculty award winners were Carrie Minton in first, Linsner in second, and Maggie Kreigh in third. Various strategies were used to grow the original investment.
"We really try to stress to students that this challenge is one-month long and what you would do in this challenge is not necessarily what you would do with a retirement portfolio where your timeframe is 20-30-40 years," said Wolters. "For this challenge, with the shorter timeframe, students are pretty actively trading."
Wolters said many students went the traditional investment routes with long purchases, but some students took more aggressive routes and even shorted stocks, or bet against them.
"So, again, nothing we would recommend probably for amateur trading," she said, "but some of them did some more research with some other strategies they implemented."
Legacy Financial presented Visa gift cards to the top student and faculty participants.