Bringing to mind images of Wall Street and insider trading, young entrepreneurs at the College recently founded the Dartmouth Finance Club. The club's purpose is to create an informal forum where students may meet and discuss investment strategies, new financial instruments, and national and global economic trends that may affect the markets.
"I noticed a tremendous amount of interest around campus in finance," Club President Dan McKone '94 said.
Since many other colleges have a club of this sort, "We aimed to fill a gap at Dartmouth," Chairman Walid Kamhawi '94 said.
The club is currently comprised of about 50 members, but over 80 students have expressed interest in the organization.
"We're not all economics majors," McKone said. "We're just students who want to keep up on stocks."
The members are presently playing a game called the Stock Market Challenge, which serves as a mock Wall Street experience. In order to play, they have transformed an ordinary Blitzmail account into an elaborate brokerage system.
Students invest money in order to purchase portfolios, which can contain up to 10 different stocks. The price of the first portfolio is $10 and any subsequent portfolios cost $5. Each portfolio consists of $100,000 in play money.
Although individual students may use software or spread sheets to help them make stock choices, the game itself is played over Blitzmail.
According to the game rules, trading stocks during the challenge is allowed, although there is a transaction cost of 50 cents to sell and 50 cents to buy. The stock prices used are the closing prices as quoted in the newspapers.
McKone said, "People are already appreciating their profit or getting killed."
This stock market endeavor, however, is not all pretend. Whichever student has earned the most money by the end of the term will receive 70 percent of the actual pool. According to Economics Professor Mark Hooker, faculty advisor to the club, this means that the winner will take home several hundred dollars. The second place finisher receives 20 percent of the pool, and the last 10 percent of the game's earnings goes toward the club's expenses.
Although this round will only last until the end of the term, McKone hopes to begin next September with a year-long challenge.
In addition to organizing the Stock Market Challenge, the Finance Club also conducts a weekly current events round table discussion.
