Year 9 Commerce ASX Sharemarket

Over the past few months, Year 9 Commerce students have taken part in the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) game. As part of our investing topic, the game provided us with the opportunity to learn about the sharemarket and develop our skills in using Excel to analyse our hypothetical investment portfolio.

Students began the ASX schools sharemarket game in early April, roughly a month after it commenced, and started to develop a game plan informed by their basic knowledge of investing in the sharemarket. In groups of 2-3, students were given $50 000 of virtual cash in the game to invest in ASX-listed companies using live market prices. As the classes continued to play, we further developed our knowledge, learning about factors which influence share prices, sectors and the benefits and risks of investing. We aimed to employ techniques such as diversification to build a portfolio which would yield long-term profits over a time span of 10 years. The game provided valuable insight into the world of investing, teaching us strategies to build and maintain a secure portfolio in the future.

After the ASX game finished on May 22, we then used a spreadsheet to plot our stock price data, predict future returns, analyse the performance of the portfolio and justify our choices during the game. By exploring the results of the game, we were able to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the stock market and develop better decision-making skills regarding investments.

To integrate these skills in our learning, Ms Nolan’s commerce class has been working in small groups to develop a board game to teach players how investing works on the ASX, showcasing the effect of real-world economic and political events on the sharemarket. We constructed board games with cardboard, scissors and glue, to create engaging and informative strategy games. This task helped us become more informed about contemporary events relating to the ASX and encouraged us to collaborate in producing an entertaining learning tool. 

Overall, this unit was highly successful in providing knowledge and techniques to make stable and profitable investments, giving us a toolkit to make our own financial decisions in the future. Congratulations to Joshua Fang and Hayden Kan, who ranked 23rd out of 20,178 players despite entering a month later than the game’s starting date!

By Avivi Davidson and Evie Cairns (Year 9)