Award-Winning Barnegat 5th Grader Sees Finance Class Pay Off In Dividends

BARNEGAT, NJ — Skip the financial advisor next time you have questions about stocks - this Barnegat elementary schooler has you covered.

Nolan Nguyen, a fifth grade student at Robert L. Horbelt Elementary School, created a long-term investment plan that won him first prize in New Jersey and third place nationally in the SIFMA Foundation's Fall 2024 InvestWrite competition, the organization announced in a news release.

His essay was chosen from thousands of entries and displayed a clear understanding of diversification, long-term investing and risk, according to the SIFMA Foundation (read his essay at the end of this article). Nguyen and his teacher, Roy Huff, were honored at a ceremony on May 29.

InvestWrite is the capstone to the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game, a curriculum-based simulation in which students manage a hypothetical $100,000 portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and cash. The program has reached more than 23 million students since 1977.

“We’re thrilled to celebrate Nolan for this outstanding achievement,” said Melanie Mortimer, President of the SIFMA Foundation. “This is a powerful example of how financial education helps young people take control of their futures. By understanding long-term investing, students like Nolan are building not just portfolios, but real financial confidence, know-how and independence.”

Each year, InvestWrite challenges students to apply what they’ve learned in the Stock Market Game to a real-world investing scenario. Thousands of financial professionals across the country volunteer to judge the essays, selecting winners who demonstrate depth of knowledge, critical thinking, and a practical vision for financial independence.

In the Fall essay writing competition, 4th–12th grade students were asked to reflect on their Stock Market Game portfolios and consider the following questions: “Was your portfolio diversified? If so, how? If not, how could you make it more diversified for long-term financial success?” Students were challenged to explain their investment strategy and recommend a future approach to saving or investing that reflects their understanding of a sound, diversified financial plan.

Here's Nguyen's winning essay, courtesy of the SIFMA Foundation:

Have you ever heard of the word’s diversification, stocks, mutual funds, bonds, index funds, shorting?… I could real-ly go on with this all day, but you're probably wondering where I learned all these words. In my Gifted and Talented class, my fellow peers and I played the Stock Market Game.

Now you’re probably thinking, “You've only confused me more! What is the Stock Market Game?” So, for all you poor souls who don’t know, a stock is a share of a compa-ny. So now, you’re probably thinking “I see! The Stock Market Game is where you buy stocks!” But still wrong. The Stock Market Game is where you buy stocks using pretend money, so you don’t go bankrupt. (“Game,” any-one?)

First, let me explain some other words. Diversification is when you spread your investments in a variety of compa-nies in different sectors. You can also invest in things like gold and silver. From my reading of The Motley Fool, the order of the 11 sectors based on size is as follows: Infor-mation Technology, Healthcare, Financials, Consumer Dis-cretionary, Communication Services, Industrials, Consum-er Staples, Energy, Utilities, Real Estate, and Materials. (That was a mouthful!) My teacher used the phrase “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” A portfolio is a col-lection of really anything and everything, but in this in-stance, we are referring to a collection of stocks, bonds, (basically an IOU, but with interest), and mutual funds, (a mutual fund is basically a whole lot of stocks grouped to-gether) basically anything and everything financial. A short sale (shorting for short (pun not intended, promise) is betting on a stock to go down.


Going off the previous paragraph, let’s talk about diversi-fying your portfolio. You can probably figure this one out at first glance, but if you don’t know, it’s basically like my teacher said, “Not putting all your eggs into one basket.” The concept is simply investing in stocks from different sectors to add to your portfolio. (That’s simple now that you look at it, right?) Although you are probably thinking “Why would I want to do this?” The answer is, really sim-ple. For example, if you invest in both healthcare and technology stocks, and technology stocks go down, you, at the least, will just not lose as much money, (it’s also re-ally based on how good your stocks are) because your healthcare stocks are still doing alright. (That’s simple now that you look at it, right?)
Now, let’s talk about diversifying my portfolio. Below are my stocks, and then after that I will explain how my portfolio is diversified.

• Apple - 10 shares
• Baron Partners Fund R6 Shares (Mutual Fund) - 10 shares Carvana (Short, 10 shares) Constellation Energy Corporation - 10 shares
• Duolingo - 15 shares
• Microsoft (short - 10)
• Netflix - 10 shares
• Nvidia - 20 shares
• PepsiCo - 10 shares
• Reddit - 2 shares
• Spotify - 30 shares
• Target - 20 shares
• Tesla - 40 shares

I shall now explain how my portfolio is diversified. For ex-ample, while Constellation Energy is in the energy sector, Spotify is in the communication services sector, and Baron Partners Fund R6 Shares alone has stocks in Consumer Discretionary, Industrials, Financials, Real Estate, Infor-mation Technology, and Healthcare sectors. You are prob-ably thinking, “Will this kid ever stop shooting off his yap-per?”...and the answer is no. This is just the beginning. I will point out how my portfolio is, sadly, not diversified. For example, Duolingo and Nvidia are both in the Infor-mation Technology sector, Netflix and PepsiCo in Consum-er Discretionary, (along with Reddit) and…that’s really it. Lastly, to analyze the performance of my portfolio. This is pretty short. My portfolio is actually really volatile, (Bumpy, up-down, you get the idea.) but if you look at the bigger picture, it basically just goes up over the past two months I've been playing the Stock Market Game.

Overall, my experience with the Stock Market Game was super exciting, educational, and really just interesting, and the great thing is that I can use these skills later on. I hope that you learned a lot (Although this really wasn't meant to be educational to any readers) throughout this essay, and I just hope you enjoyed it. Nothing else I really have to say, except… well… The process is just so simple once you break it down!!! (*Sigh* and to think I spent six hours working on this essay every weekend…)