For nearly two decades, students in New York City-area schools have played The Stock Market Game, just like others across the nation.
A virtual Wall Street experience, the game is sponsored by the Securities Industry Association and the New York District of the Economic Education Foundation.
The game itself is a simulated trading environment that allows each student to parlay a hypothetical $100,000 investment into gains and losses.
Without the generous donation of computers to participating schools, however, the game would not be possible.
Securities Data Publishing (SDP), the New York-based publisher of Traders Magazine, is one of the many companies making frequent donations of computers. Recently, it donated a dozen computers, which were collected by a team from New York-based Lynch, Jones & Ryan, another sponsor. Incredibly, only 13,000 New York students participate in the game, despite attending school in the world's financial capital.
"When I heard that from Howard Schwartz [president of Lynch, Jones and Ryan] I felt SDP could assist by an ongoing donation of computers," said SDP Group Publisher Kenneth W. Heath.