It’s Your Money – Make the Most of It
How to Properly Invest
What are Stocks?
 Literally – “pieces” of a company
 You pay for the price of a share (1 stock)
 However, this price changes each day
 So, your goal is to buy when the stock is cheap and sell the stock once it
increases in value
 In other words, the company’s value has increased a lot.
 Things to keep in mind:
 Uncertainty in a company’s future hurts stock values
 Often, world events also positively or negatively affect stock values
 Example: Europe’s financial crisis caused United States stocks to decrease in
value across the board
Background on Investing in Stocks
 Many Americans invest in stocks without understanding that
they can invest without taking a risk at all!
 There’s a trick to investing
 A LEGAL trick
 If you use it, you can safely gain money over a long period of time with an
average return more than most other options
 Even better than investing in mutual funds, where you have to pay private
managers large fees to pick the stocks
 Therefore, I challenge all of you to beat me (and yourselves).
 I will use the “trick,” and you will invest as you’d like.
Rules
 Each person gets $5,000 fake money to invest and fills out the
sheet (example on next slide)
 You can’t go over the $5,000
 However, whoever makes the most over their initial investment wins
 So, if I invest $4,700 that’s OK
 We’ll check back every once in a while to see how our stocks are
doing
 I’ll update a leader board on the board
 I’ll bring more financial advice in from time to time
 Remember: always do what you want with your money
 The information I provide is simply something that’s worked often for financial
professionals (and Harvard Professors)
New Stock
Value
# Shares
Owned
$ Gained / Lost
New Stock
Value
# Shares
Owned
$ Gained / Lost
New Stock
Value
# Shares
Owned
$ Gained / Lost
New Stock
Value
# Shares
Owned
Companies
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
FINAL $ LOSS /
GAIN
FINAL $ LOSS /
GAIN
FINAL $ LOSS /
GAIN
FINAL $ LOSS /
GAIN
$ Gained / Lost
Companies to choose from
(seniors):
Nike
$91.15
Target
$63.92
Apple
$604.00
Casio Microsoft
$28.21
Google
$675.15
Coke
$37.04
McDonalds
$86.71
Coach
$55.89
Costco
$96.94
Pepsi (AKA YUM!)
$68.98
Starbucks
$45.87
Doritos Pringles (AKA
Kellogg)
$52.90
Companies to choose from
(freshman):
Starbucks
$45.87
Subway Jack in the Box
$25.67
Apple
$604.00
Food City Kroger (AKA
Fry’s)
$25.18
Microsoft
$28.21
Panda Express Chipotle
$251.52
Raytheon
$ 55.71
Diary Queen (AKA
Berkshire Hathaway)
$86.66
McDonalds
$86.71
Verizon
$44.73
UPS
$73.02
Advice ( “The Plastic Trap”)
 First, DON’T fail to pay your credit card OR ANY other means of
debt (like phone bill or store bill, etc.)
 EVEN if it is only $0.01
 Know why?
 Deregulation
 Do “credit scores” exist?
 Technically…
 Next time:
 Why college is affordable
 B.A. worth $2.1M
 Over high school
Adapted from the Wikimedia Commons file “Smartcard2.png
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smartcard2.png