PHOTO PROVIDED Montgomery Area High School Stock Market Game challenge participants are shown from left, Josh Glover, Colby Barto, Dylan Rupert, Nephi Barnhart, Austin LaChappelle and Ryan Monoski, finance and information technology teacher.

Area high schools are again participating in the local spring Stock Market Game challenge.

Each week during the game, The Sun-Gazette will publish the top three teams from local high and middle schools that are participating in the challenge, starting Feb. 15.

Participating school districts in this area are East Lycoming, Montgomery, and Muncy.

The Stock Market Game is an award-winning educational program from EconomicsPennsylvania.

There are five games each year for the Stock Market Game. Montgomery Area High School participated in the fall 2015 game and won first place in the state for the game ending December 2015.

The winning team included students Josh Glover, Colby Barto, Dylan Rupert, Nephi Barnhart and Austin LaChappelle, who worked with teacher, Ryan Monoski.

“I am very proud of them. These winning students were very excited,” Monoski said.

The Stock Market Game, also is sponsored by EconomicsPennsylvania, and is an online educational program used in classrooms to help teach math, social studies, business, economics and language skills also while focusing on the importance of long term savings and investments.

Recently it was announced that The Stock Market Game, primarily for students in grades four through 12 is now available at the third grade level as well.

In the Stock Market Game, students are given a virtual cash account of $100,000, and are encouraged to create the best-performing portfolio using a live trading simulation.

Students work together in teams, practicing leadership, organization, negotiation and cooperation as they compete for the top spot.

In building a portfolio, students research and evaluate stocks and make investment decisions based on what they’ve learned.

Teams trade common stocks and mutual funds from the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges; earn interest on cash balances, pay interest if buying on margin and pay a commission on all trades.

To determine why certain stocks perform the way they do or why the broader market has moved up or down, they need to understand how the economy works and to calculate their returns they need to do the math.

Since 1977, more than 14 million students have participated in The Stock Market Game program.

For more information, visit www.economicspa.org.