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Baraboo stock
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- By Ed Treleven
- The Wisconsin State Journal
The Death Co. is a hot commodity.
The fictitious firm, actually four Baraboo High School students in the school's stock market investment club, was the top-earner last week among American and Canadian teams in CNBC's Student Stock Tournament and is second overall at this stage in the five-week competition.
"It was one of those technology stocks, which helped them gain 30 percent in a single day" |
As the week's leader, the Baraboo team got a mention Monday on CNBC, which is the NBC television network's cable financial news and talk network.
The Death Co., comprised of freshmen Dustin Cross, James King and Sam Waddell and junior Matt Kaney, put together a portfolio that gained 34.3 percent last week, tops among the stock portfolios entered in the tournament. The Dow Jones Average, by comparison, lost 0.58 percent last week.
The next best for the week were the No Limit Traders of West Vancouver Secondary School in British Columbia, Canada, which gained 29.52 percent.
Death Co. is one of 10 teams from the club at Baraboo High and more than 4,000 in North America competing in the tourney.
Although the name Death Co. may conjure images of black-clad overlords, masters of a vast, macabre financial kingdom, it's really just a name, said Cross, 15. As the tournament began, he was too busy to register, so he asked King to register a funny name.
''I told him to pick something that wouldn't be too stupid,'' Cross said.
Chris Lebots, a math teacher at Baraboo, has run the investment club at school for three years and had one during the nine years he taught at Portage High School. The club's 32 students are involved in eight stock market competitions this semester, he said, building simulated portfolios that compete against other schools.
In the CNBC tournament, students were given the play-money equivalent of $100,000, which they invested as they saw fit. The winning school for the spring semester, announced in April, gets 200 shares of General Electric common stock, valued around $20,000.
Most days, Cross said, the team reads up on financial news on the Internet in the morning and evening and makes its investments around 9 a.m., based on what's happening in the stock markets. Although they may tinker during the day, the Death Co. usually holds pat until around 2:30 p.m., when they might make some last-minute deals before the markets close for the day at 3 p.m.
The key to the Death Co.'s success, said Cross, a neophyte investor this semester, has been a buy-low, sell-high approach to technology stocks. The team's research finds Internet and other technology-sector stocks likely to rise sharply, buys them, then sells them when they appear to have reached their peak.
It was one of those technology stocks, which helped them gain 30 percent in a single day, that late last week vaulted them to the top, he said. Had they been able to sell faster, Cross said, their earnings might have been even better.
But now that they've been successful, their strategy is a bit more conservative.
''We're trying to be a little more careful,'' he said. ''We're trying to keep up a good position.''
Posted February 11, 1999
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