EMBARGOED UNTIL: March 17, 2016 1:00 PM ET
Contact: Liz Pierce, 212-313-1173,
11-year-old Ethan Driver is Investing Genius New Jersey Winner of SIFMA Foundation’s Fall 2015 InvestWrite® Competition
Smarter than a fifth grader? Think again! Driver’s Winning Investment Advice Astonishes
Freehold, NJ, March 17, 2016– Paying close attention on the way to school is exactly why an 11-year-old from New Jersey just became a state winner of the SIFMA Foundation’s Fall 2015 InvestWrite® competition. Driver, a fifth-grader at Park Avenue Elementary School, won first place for New Jersey in the elementary school division of InvestWrite. The program challenges students to consider an investing scenario and make recommendations that incorporate short- and long-term financial goals.
“Ethan’s innovative ideas and remarkable essay earned him the SIFMA Foundation’s ‘InvestWrite Genius’ title this year,” said Melanie Mortimer, President of the SIFMA Foundation. “We commend Ethan and his teacher, Suzanne Peltzman, for this achievement. Helping students better understand our economy, our markets, the role of investors, and how to make good investments will pay dividends for the students, their education, and the New Jersey economy.”
InvestWrite serves as a culminating activity for 600,000 4th-12th graders nationwide who compete each year in the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game™, an online simulation of the global capital markets that reinforces STEM learning, 21st Century skills, economics, investing and personal finance. Since InvestWrite’s inception in 2004, more than 185,000 students have submitted essays. Ethan Driver is among 20,000 students this school year taking the InvestWrite challenge, which bridges classroom learning in mathematics, social studies, and language arts with the practical research and knowledge required for long-term personal financial planning.
Driver’s essay explored how things he sees on his way to school have been impacted by investments. He also had to propose a good long-term investment that would benefit his community or the world. Driver wrote about Apple citing the number of iPads in schools around the world and the impact on education. “Apple can benefit the community because the technology they make is very useful,” Driver said. “The products that they make can even be useful to schools! More and more schools are using Apple products. Just two years ago in 2013, Apple sold 8 million iPads to schools around the world!”
InvestWrite enables students like Driver to develop the personal financial savvy needed to make practical financial decisions with confidence and gain a deeper understanding of economic opportunities, consequences, and benefits. Students consider real-world events and news, conduct research online, and develop investment recommendations. They work in groups during the Stock Market Game program and then write their InvestWrite essays individually to reflect their critical thinking, analysis and creative talents.
Driver loves writing and is an aspiring artist and musician and enjoys video and computer games. His teacher, Suzanne Peltzman, is a 21-year veteran teacher and has participated in The Stock Market Game for four years and this was the first time her students wrote essays. Peltzman said “The InvestWrite competition gave my students an avenue to deepen their awareness and to cultivate a connection between investing and making a difference in people’s lives from a small scale community to a global difference.” Winning InvestWrite essays are chosen through rigorous judging by thousands of teachers and industry professionals who evaluate students’ understanding of long-term investing, diversification, the capital markets, and factors that drive investments as well as their expression of investment ideas in essay form.
An independent study by Learning Point Associates found that students who participated in the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game scored significantly higher on mathematics and financial literacy tests than their peers who did not participate. They also found that teachers who taught The Stock Market Game reported that the program motivated them to better plan for their own financial futures. The Stock Market Game has been named the only program that successfully increased scores on the Jumpstart Coalition’s test of high school students’ financial literacy.
Driver and Peltzman will be honored at an event to be held at Park Avenue Elementary School, 280 Park Avenue, Freehold, NJ on March 17, 2016 at 1:00 PM ET.
Winning Essay by Ethan Driver: Apple
Less than 40 years ago, Apple was just two friends putting things together in a garage. But now, Apple is a very wealthy company. They make iPads, iPod Touches, iPhones computers, and watches, and people ALWAYS want Apple products. Once they get them, they can’t even go A DAY without them. When consumers buy an Apple product and they think that they have the latest one, another one comes out right away the next year! So Apple is always right on top of their products. In 1976 Apple-1 was the first modern personal computer, and it didn’t even sell that much! But little did they know that Apple would one day become one of the world's most valued companies.
Apple can benefit the community because the technology they make is very useful. The products that they make can even be useful to schools! More and more schools are using Apple products. Just two years ago in 2013, Apple sold 8 MILLION IPADS TO SCHOOLS AROUND THE WORLD! By doing this, Apple has not only helped communities, but has also made A LOT of money. Just last year, Apple released its fiscal Q1 2014 earnings, reporting $57.6 billion in revenue, $13.1 billion in net profit, representing $14.50 per share. Also, back in 2011, Apple launched the “Apple Matching Gifts Program.” Since then, it has been a TREMENDOUS success. With that program Apple made a combined total of over $78 million donated to charities and nonprofits around the world! But it didn’t end there. On March 16, 2015 Apple also launched a “Global Volunteer Program” to encourage its employees to volunteer in local communities. Basically, it is a program Apple is offering to their employees to receive training to help them create and publicize local volunteer events to make their communities better.
The founder of Apple was a man named Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, he died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56. But Apple didn’t go with him! To this date, Apple is still making great progress with their products. But did you ever wonder why Apple is called Apple? Well, earlier in Steve Jobs’ life he worked in an apple orchard and came to the belief that the apple was the perfect fruit. With this belief and the help of Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the Apple Computer was found on April 1, 1976 and Apple was born.
When Steve Jobs was alive he failed A LOT. One of his fails was even called “America's Greatest Failure.” But one of Steve Jobs’ quotes before he died is, “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations”.
To diversify my portfolio in The Stock Market Game I bought 100 shares of Apple and it has become one of our top stocks! My team and I selected Apple to be one of our stocks because not too long ago Apple released a new iPhone and they made an enormous amount of money from it. During that time, Apple made A LOT of money for my portfolio.
Apple’s ticker symbol is AAPL, so if you are in The Stock Market Game and are looking for companies to invest in, I definitely recommend Apple because it rarely loses money and if it does, it doesn’t lose money for a long time. It just gets right back up and starts earning again.
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About the SIFMA Foundation for Investor Education
The SIFMA Foundation is dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of the financial markets for individuals of all backgrounds, with a focus on youth. Drawing on the support and expertise of the financial industry, the SIFMA Foundation provides financial education programs and tools that strengthen economic opportunities across communities and increase individuals’ access to the benefits of the global marketplace. Notable Foundation programs include the Stock Market Game, which has served nearly 16 million students since it began in 1977, the InvestWrite national essay competition, www.investwrite.org, the Capitol Hill Challenge, and Invest It Forward. For more information on the work of the SIFMA Foundation, visit www.sifma.org/foundation.
About SIFMA
SIFMA is the voice of the U.S. securities industry. We represent the broker-dealers, banks and asset managers whose nearly 1 million employees provide access to the capital markets, raising over $2.5 trillion for businesses and municipalities in the U.S., serving clients with over $20 trillion in assets and managing more than $67 trillion in assets for individual and institutional clients including mutual funds and retirement plans. SIFMA, with offices in New York and Washington, D.C., is the U.S. regional member of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA). For more information, visit www.sifma.org.
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