Rep. Hank Johnson congratulates winners of SIFMA Capitol Hill Challenge

Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04) congratulated four Redan High School graduates from the winning team for this year’s 2018 National SIFMA Capitol Hill Challenge’s Stock Market Game at his Washington, D.C. office.

“These young minds deserve to be recognized and celebrated,” said Congressman Johnson, who hosted the students on June 13. “We must continue to foster all of our students’ interests in the financial market and support their efforts to become self-sufficient with their finances and their understanding of the global markets.” 

The Stone Mountain team competed against thousands of students from across the country to bring the first place honor back home to Georgia’s Fourth District. The 14-week challenge organized hundreds of teams of middle and high school students by Congressional district and state and taught the importance of saving and investing, while promoting a better understanding of government. Teams invested a hypothetical $100,000 in listed stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and learned the value of the capital markets as they worked together to maximize the return of their portfolios.

 Captain Shania Hinds, 18, said everyone on her team set out with one goal in mind and worked hard every day to achieve it, no matter who was actually given the title of team leader.

 Members of the team said the challenge was a fun competition for them and they enjoyed developing their winning tactics to strategize and analyze stocks.    

“Finance is big part of business, and since I’m striving to run my own business in the near future, this competition was awesome for that,” said Redan team member Alexis Goings, 18, who is currently developing a business model to operate her own catering business.

Since the Capitol Hill Challenge began in 2004, the program has made more than 4,100 matches of U.S. representatives and senators with schools, reaching more than 115,000 students from all 50 states.

 The competition uses the SIFMA Foundation’s curriculum-based Stock Market Game to help students develop a better understanding of the global economy, become college and career ready, and improve their knowledge of math, economics, and business. The program is proven to raise student scores on tests of mathematics, economics and financial knowledge. It is also proven to positively impact students’ and teachers’ personal financial behavior.

Their coach, William Roth, said he started educating students at Redan about the SIFMA stock market program last year but this was the first time the school produced a team to compete in the Capitol Hill Challenge.  

 “These outstanding young people dominated the country,” said Roth, who teaches English and Language Arts at Redan. “Their future growth and possibilities are limitless.”