The first day of trading began this year on the 13th of March and closes on the 21st f May. The students have a total often weeks to accumulate as much profit as they The class is broken up into groups or syndicates. The students create a name for there syndicate, which will be the the profile they invest under. Spilling the Milk invested in four different companies, three of the companies resulted in a loss and one company gave profit, but the profit was so miniscule that It didn’t impact enough for us to breach the $50,000 mark.
Spilling the Milks Minimal plan was to Invest In companies offering dividends and then once receiving the dividend we would sell the shares. This Is why we decided to invest In James Hardier Industries OX) a company speculating In manufacturing fibber cement building products, we purchased 850 shares at $14. 56 per share on the 14th of march. The XX dividend was at ICC per share, resulting in a $263. 50 gain. We decided to hold on to the shares which turned out to be a profitable decision because the share ended up at $14. 0 allowing for a profit of c per share. Because we decided not to sell the share after the dividend was distributed our initial plan as flawed when we didn’t sell the shares after receiving the dividend. It was our best decision to invest in XX because it was the only one of our companies to result in profit. Next we decided to Invest In Ardent Leisure Group (DAD) a company that owns and operates large leisure destinations, EGG, Otherworld and Whitewater world. We researched the company online and decided that investing in this company would be a good idea.
We purchased 350 DAD shares at 2. 50 a share for a total investment of $875. The company had some ups and down throughout the 9 week period we were invested which is expected in the share market. The decision to invest in DAD was poor and resulted in a loss, at the end of closing the price of Dad’s shares was $2. 45, resulting in a loss of $17. 50. The share price fall could be a result of the season changing from Summer to Autumn, where less people would visit there watermarks.
In our next Investment we continued on with the plan of researching the company and deciding as a syndicate whether we thought It would be a profitable Investment. We decided on Investing In a blue card share to Insure that we could have a reliable hare that wasn’t going to fluctuate as much as the others, so we decided to Invest In the Bank Of Queensland (BOX), investing in banks is generally very safe because of fine because there is a high chance the the investment will result in a profit. We purchased 300 shares on the 18th of March for $12. 0 a share for a total investment of $3,810. 00. The investment was going well for the first month, when it rose to Just over $13. 00 It would have been an ideal time to sell the share but we had decided to hold on because we believed that the share would not fluctuate so much. Towards the end of April the share dropped $1. 00, resulting in a loss of $300, but because the BOX distributed a dividend of ICC on the 24 April our loss was not as great. Throughout the game I experienced what the real world share market would feel like, the feel of losing and earning money.
I felt that if the game is to be a learning tool for students to gain a greater understanding of the shareware they should implement more rules to control the syndicates to makes sure that all syndicates get in and invest in companies, otherwise some syndicates may Just be too lazy to learn anything from the experience. Spilling the Milk did not make the best decisions throughout the game, this reflected on our overall performance in the game. Ending the game with $49,272. 47, we incurred a loss of $727. 53. Spilling the Milk came 5th at Holbrook Anglican school and came 11,88th out of 18,413 syndicates Australia wide.
The shareware game has the potential to be a great learning tool showing students exactly what it is like to be an investor on the Australian Stock Exchange, but the game does need to implement some rules that make sure all companies invest and to sake sure that syndicates invest in companies rather than Just sit at $50,000 and not play the game. Overall the game works wonderfully with an Economics class learning about what factors can affect the shareware such as world events, Inflation and Interest rates, trends and hype.
If Spilling the Milk were to play the game again, there would be a number of things I would do differently. I would make sure I do even more research on the companies I wish to invest in,to see what is happening in the economy that loud have an effect on a company you want to invest in or have already invested in. The information you can gain from research and news could give you the insight to gaining extreme profits or stop you from losing it all.
I would recommend investing in plenty of companies and diversify your investment, what I mean by this is do not invest heavily into one sector of the economy because if that sector fails you will suffer heavily. Also invest in some bluebird shares to hold onto the entire game, investing in these bluebird shares will not be cheap but are ere secure and it will be very unlikely for you to lose money in them, EGG banks, banks are great to invest in because they are very secure and it is less probable for them to lose money.
The downside to investing heavily in blue card shares is that it will be very hard for you to make huge profits off them. Also be prepared to see your share prices drop, if you see the shares drop do not Just automatically sell your shares. It is likely that the share will rise soon after. Game did serve as an educational tool teaching us what it is like to be a potential investor in the real life shareware.
