Market mania: Carmichaels high schoolers start investment club
There’s real money on the line for the investing club at Carmichaels Area High School in Greene County.
The school district has collaborated with the Community Foundation of Greene County to launch Carmichaels High School Investment Club Endowed Fund, which provides real-life, hands-on investing experience for students and promotes financial literacy.
The community foundation gave the club a start-up investment of $10,000 as a gift from an anonymous donor through its Forget Me Not Fund, which provides grants to support educational, civic and charitable programs in Greene County.
The investment club – which includes at least a dozen students in grades nine through 12 – is managing a sizable investment portfolio.
“I’m really excited about this opportunity. Our goal is to educate students on financial literacy,” said Cassie Menhart, library media specialist at Carmichaels Area High School and club adviser. “We’ve been participating in a stock market game through the Pennsylvania Council on Financial Literacy where we have a hypothetical $100,000 investment in the stock market, and we’ve done really well with it. But when the community foundation gave us the opportunity to invest real money, it changed the game. Because it’s real money, we really have to research what we’re investing in, and we want less risk.”
Said one of the anonymous donors, “Investing in the stock market requires knowledge and skills. You can’t obtain these skills by pretending to invest. To use real money that you can lose might make you think more clearly.”
Menhart is guiding the club through the complexities of responsible money management and investment strategies.
Also assisting is Joshuah Dains, a financial adviser at Milinovich & Co. Inc. in Waynesburg. The club meets once a month, as early as 7 a.m., to talk about investing and finances.
The club members are scheduled to meet next week to decide what they’d like to invest in, and they will buy the assets members agree upon.
“The neat thing is that the kids will be the ones making the decisions. I’ll serve as a guardrail, I’ll offer perspective,” said Dains. “This is going to be a learning experience, and there’s no learning that happens without mistakes. But we’re not going to buy a bunch of bitcoin, we’re going to look at mutual funds, a stock or two, we’re looking for a diversified portfolio that will set the foundation or what a long term investment looks like. It’s super exciting for me. Our community wants to see young people to succeed, and we will do creative things to make this happen.”
Annual proceeds from the fund will be distributed by the Student Investment Club to student clubs and organizations at Carmichaels Area School District – a win-win proposisiton.
Dains said the chance to invest in the stock market is a unique experience for students.
“I graduated in 2011, and to do something like actually invest in the stock market was unimaginable. To get to this point, where kids have $10,000 in money donated through the community foundation’s Forget Me Not Fund so they can learn about investing, in a way that’s cool and fun, it’s exceptional,” said Dains. “This doesn’t happen at many schools.”
One prominent feature of the high school media center is a stock market ticker that provides students with real-time updates on stock prices and other financial data.
Having real money in play made a big difference to the students in the club, who take it seriously.
“We are honored to have the opportunity to establish the investment club at Carmichaels High School. We are excited to put what we have learned and will learn as a group into action,” said Braden Christopher, a senior and a founding member of the investment club. “We’ll explore strategies for analyzing the stock market, using different methods to decide where to invest. Even though we won’t see the full impact of our efforts, our hope is that it will benefit future classes for years to come.”
Menhart credited Christopher and classmate Dalton Reynolds for helping to launch the club, and for their forward-thinking perspective once the club was given the money.
“They won’t benefit from what we gain long-term, but the experience for them is priceless,” said Menhart.
Starting in 2026-27, Pennsylvania high schools will be required to provide a personal financial literacy course to students.
That’s good news for Menhart, who encourages students to learn the basics of personal finance.
“Kudos for that. My personal finance course is an elective, but every time students come to my class, I tell them it’s the most important class they’ll ever have,” said Menhart. “We teach banking, credit, budgeting, and other financial matters, and they leave here with a great start on knowing about finances,” said Menhart. “The kids are gaining valuable skills that are essential for their future.”