A team of students at Community High School in West Chicago recently made decisions, which gained them more than $26,000 in the stock market. Although the students were not playing with real money, they did place first out of 300 teams in an area competition. The team was also ranked in 8^th place out of 1700 teams in the state competition.

The winning students, part of a consumer education class taught by Donald K. Zabelin, competed in a stock market simulation sponsored by the Illinois Council of Economic Education and the Chicago Tribune Educational Services Department. Each team in the competition invested an imaginary $100,000 in major common stocks. Teams could buy and sell the stocks whenever they wanted during a 15-week period. "How they do is based on how the stock market does," Zabelin said.

The team that took first, made up of Erin Madden, Leann Bertram, Jessica Krueger, Sarah Assian and Sarah Altergott, had a final portfolio value of $126,543. The winning students are all seniors from West Chicago. Zabelin said the teams used the strategy of buying 8,500 shares of Bradley Pharmaceutical and holding the shares for the entire contest.

Zabelin said the experience was valuable for all students who participated. "They learned why a company's stock might be doing well in the market, they learned about supply and demand and they learned a lot about risk," he said.