Students show their market savvy in state contest

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, May 7, 2003 | 11:08 a.m.

While many Americans were bemoaning the stock market's performance, a group of Las Vegas fourth graders grabbed hold of the bear and rode it to the top.

A team from Lummis Elementary School turned a $50,000 profit on a fictional $100,000 in 10 weeks, becoming the youngest group to ever win a statewide scholastic stock market competition.

The team of Chad Clemens, Quintin Curtis, James Miller and Chandler Yamane, all students in the Gifted and Talented Education program at Lummis, ended with $150,370, beating teams in middle school and high school.

"It's a remarkable accomplishment," said John Mundy, executive director of the Nevada Council on Economic and Entrepreneur Education, which sponsors the annual event. "But by all accounts this is a remarkable group of youngsters."

Their secret? Cold and flu season.

The winning team focused on pharmaceuticals at the urging of Miller, a home-schooled student who participates in GATE at Lummis.

"He said since it was cold and flu season we should look for pharmaceuticals," Clemens, a fellow team member, said. "We tried to pick companies that made something that really did some good."

In the 15 years of the competition, the Lummis students were the youngest to participate.

Mundy said he allowed the fourth graders to take part at the urging of their teacher, Sherry Vincent. Vincent said she explained the mechanics of trading to the students but played no role in the choice of stocks.

"She was convinced they could grasp the concepts, and she was right," Mundy said.

The team pulled its biggest profit on shares of Gilead Sciences, an international medical research corporation and manufacturer of the flu prevention drug Tamiflu. The stock rose from the March 10 purchase price of $36.89 to $46.14 by the time the contest ended.

Amy Flood, spokeswoman for Gilead Sciences, said the company was pleased to have been chosen by the Lummis students.

The stock market game "is an example of a creative approach to education, and it's great to see students of all ages taking an interest in business and the intricacies of the stock market," Flood said Monday. "It's great to hear students are interested in our company and our industry."

In addition to looking at company products, the Lummis students researched past stock performance before making purchases, said Curtis, another member of the winning team. Three companies were chosen because of their high P/E ratio, Curtis said.

"That means the ratio of the company's share price to its per-share earnings," Curtis explained confidently. "That's what you have to look for if you want a stock that's going to go up and up and up."

Despite the focus on research and hard data, team member Yemane said he now knows there's a fair amount of luck involved in stock market success stories. Had the contest continued another week, the Lummis team would have lost $25,000 when one company's stock dropped $5 a share.

"It's a good thing the game ended on a Friday and not the next Monday," Chandler said.

The second-place finisher was Cimarron-Memorial High School, which lost out to the Lummis team by just $1,150.

Still, Secretary of State Dean Heller, whose office co-sponsors the contest, was impressed, awarding a trophy -- but no cash, stocks or savings bonds -- to the winning team Tuesday.

"Based on these kids' performance," he said, "maybe the state should hire them to help manage our current budget crisis."