After contest, teen considers business world
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
LITCHFIELD — Success in a national stock market game may result in Philip Joshua Parlin of Litchfield making business a career.
Parlin is one of three students at Oak Hill High School on the top team in the Million Dollar Challenge.
The team, led by teacher Jim Ford, has led the nation almost every week of the contest.
Their most credible challenge came from Bayview High School in Wisconsin. "They were our rival from the very beginning," Parlin said. "At one point they were in first for about a week. The rest of the time we've just been dominating."
Other teams from Oak Hill placed third, fourth and fifth. Participants are students in Ford's consumer education and financial planning class. There were at least 100 schools nationwide that participated in the contest.
Parlin's team earned $2.2 million in their stock market investments. The second place team came in at $1.9 million.
As part of the game, each team was given a theoretical $1 million to invest in stocks with the opportunity to borrow another $1 million. But the borrowed money had to be returned at the end of the seven-month contest, and the teams were limited to 25 transactions.
Parlin, a junior, was on a team with Mark Sherman, another junior, and Ryan Blare, a senior. All are from Litchfield.
He said they will receive a trophy and some other prizes.
Parlin said he'll consider investing in real stocks.
"Our teacher was telling us to divide our money between a few good companies," Parlin said. "We decided to throw all our money into Emulex and Fairchild Semiconductor."
Even though the share prices rose only slightly, he said, "we still made a bundle."
Now he's looking at a career in business. "If I can beat everyone in the nation in the stock market, it wouldn't be a bad choice," Parlin said.
The national and state contests in which Ford's teams participated in are described on the Web at www.mainesms.com.
Both are sponsored by the Maine Council on Economic Education, a private, not-for-profit organization in Portland that is part of a national network.
Bob Mitchell, council president, said Ford is a big reason behind the success of Oak Hill students.
"He's just a creative and thorough teacher, very imaginative with things in the classroom," Mitchell said.
Ford said the new national contest is different from the state game.
"You're looking more toward a long position than a short position," Ford said. "This is where my experience in helping to guide the kids comes in."
Ford preaches a philosophy that says, "Putting in anything less than $25,000 is overdiversifying. In this game, you're going to play with reckless investment abandon." But he adds a caution: "We really wouldn't do this in real life."
Ford said the Wisconsin team came up strongly in the last week or two when the end of the war in Iraq poised the market for a rally.
He said the game ties in to what's going on around the world. "It's not just playing on the computers," he said.
Last school year, students from Carrie Ricker Middle School in Litchfield took first place in a simulated investment contest.
"That's our feeder school," Ford said.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
badams@centralmaine.com