Call them stock market savvy.

Knollwood School students George Clough, Patrick Malpass, and Charles Newbury of Fair Haven finished first place in the Southern Region of New Jersey Spring Stock Market Game.

The three fifth-graders, members of the Knollwood School Stock Market Club, competed against more than 100 other teams in the game, which ran for 10 weeks, ending in May. With a virtual $100,000 to invest, they made a profit of $6,977.56.

As winners of the top prize, the three attended an awards ceremony on May 26 at Stockton College where they gave a speech about their experience.

“Each of us had different ideas for choosing companies to invest in,” said George. “I chose General Electric during the week that it was number one on the Dow Jones, Charles chose Ford because the price of the stock was low and it was a solid company that had performed well in the past, and Patrick chose Sony because he loves gaming PS4.”

“I learned that it’s not hard to turn one amount of money into a lot more money when you invest carefully and have a little bit of luck. And I also learned that you never know what’s going to happen next, so you need to be prepared” said Patrick. “When we earned money, we then found more good companies to invest in.”

“You need to work together to make good decisions about your stocks, so we didn’t buy anything without informing our team members,” said Charles. “We put Pat in charge, and he wanted to buy Sony, and that became our winning stock,”

The three were also among Knollwood students honored by Superintendent Nelson Ribon, Principal Kevin Davis, and members of the Fair Haven Board of Education at a pizza party celebration on the evening of June 9.

“Having worked in finance, I know that it was not easy to achieve what you did,” Fair Haven Board of Education President Mark Mancuso said in his presentation. “Thank you for doing such a fine job of representing our school district.”

The Knollwood School Stock Market Club is comprised of fourth and fifth graders and approximately 30 students participate each year. The Club meets once a week at lunchtime and recess from February through May to learn about the stock market and to participate in online investing simulation and stockmarketgame.org.

“I am very impressed with how much these boys learned about investing,” Club Advisor and Knollwood Fifth Grade Teacher Jessica Dougherty said. “They were very motivated throughout this entire game, and their hard work paid off in the end.”

— Fair Haven School District press release