A new addition to the building for the 2024-2025 school year is the Bloomberg Finance Lab, located in the main hallway at the school’s entrance, where students participated in the newly introduced Bloomberg Investment Challenge this past fall.
“It was the first time Commack High School participated in the Bloomberg Challenge because the lab just opened this year,” said financial literacy teacher and adviser of the Bloomberg Investment Challenge, Peter Myers.
The Bloomberg Investment Challenge allows students to learn the ropes on investing. The challenge became popular, with the Bloomberg Terminal being taught in Career and Financial Management, and Economics classes, according to Myers.
“We had about 75 students participate in a stock market simulation, where they were trying to outperform the market. Bloomberg produces an index, which is a global indicator, and each team is provided $1 million fake money to purchase various stocks in hopes of outperforming the market,” said Myers.
The Bloomberg Terminal is the stock market simulation and it allows students to have a proper understanding of real-world investing.
“[The introduction of Bloomberg labs are a] tremendous resource to allow students to work with the same tools that the people who work on Wall Street and the investing field use,” said business teacher Robert Plechner.
Student teams were allowed to have a teacher adviser to help with their decisions, and Plechner was Commack’s first place team adviser. The first place team came in 84th place globally. According to Plechner, his students did not need his advice much because they were in his Wall Street class, so they had prior knowledge.
“I was there if the kids needed me. One student was in my Wall Street Class [at the time], the other was in it last year. The other also happened to win the New York State Contest and [placed] nationally [in] the Invest-Write Contest, so my role was relatively limited,” said Plechner.
The Bloomberg Investment Challenge allowed students to not only learn the Bloomberg terminal, but it also taught them life skills.
“I learned a lot about how to invest stocks and how to choose the stocks so that I would make smart financial choices and how to read the news to learn about global events that could impact the stocks,” said freshman Katelyn C.
Being caught up in the news affects stocks, potentially having an impact on a team’s placing in the competition. It is also an important life skill.
“I learned I need to keep up with things, and not put stuff aside because something as important as stock, you need to know world news and what’s happening around the world and see how your stocks are gonna be affected by world news,” said sophomore Sienna M.
The Bloomberg Investment Challenge can help students in the future by teaching them financial literacy.
“The Bloomberg Investment Challenge can help me seek investment opportunities, and I can use the knowledge that I learned to see trends on the market to make good decisions about my finances,” said Katelyn. ◼️
