What a week on Wall Street!
What a week on Wall Street!
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Teachers Workshop hosted an amazing group of educators from around the United States and the world South Carolina, Indiana, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Wales, France, and Germany. Students in grades 3 through graduate school will benefit from the intense teacher training on Wall Street.
John Thain, CEO of the NYSE, spent an hour talking with us and answering questions. Hes an electrical engineer from MIT and Im an electrical engineer from Duke. We hit it off handsomely! Nelson Chai, the CFO of the NYSE, enlighted us on the recent integration of NYSE and Arca and the current bid to buy Euronext. We learned about the roles of the specialist and broker first hand from Kevin Feeley, Managing Director of Bear Wagner Specialists. The legal ramifications and oversight of the auction market are complex, but after several hours with market professionals our group of educators now understand the basic issues and structure.
Perhaps the most exciting times were spent on the trading floor. Ten of our 41 teachers rang the bell on Monday, July 24 at exactly 9:29:30am. The same day we stood in the gallery over the trading floor and closed trading by clapping the bell out at 3:59:30pm. Each pair of teachers spent 40 minutes with a specialist on the floor. Our specialist executed a series of trades on Chiquita banana stock while we were talking with him. There is a whole different abbreviated language. He spent 30 seconds relaying information that would take a normal person 5 minutes to convey. The exchange floor is so big that we got lost on our tour of the four trading floors. If you want to see a map of the trading floor, go to http://marketrac.nyse.com/mt/index.html
Time and again, the leaders of the business world reached out to teachers and students. Not only does the NYSE host exciting workshops for teachers, but hundreds of summer interns are employed each year on Wall Street. Dale Bernstein, executive Vice President of human resources for the NYSE, urged teachers to teach concise business writing, computer literacy, math skills, grammar skills, how to read and understand directions, and how to research to solve problems. Math and grammar are so important that the NYSE offers employees courses in these subjects.
We learned about a wealth of information on the Internet.
www.nyse.com – includes several stock market education programs geared towards middle school, high school and adult learners. Click on About NYSE then on Education
www.federalreserveeducation.org View and order economic information, comic books, videos, and games from the Federal Reserve.
www.stockmarketgame.com Invest $100,000 in the Stock Market with a team of your peers
www.ja.org Junior Achievement will bring business professionals into the classroom to teach about economic principles and they even supply the books & activity sheets.
I am truly blessed to have spent a week at the New York Stock Exchange learning from the experts about how our market economy functions. The caliber of presenters was outstanding and the educators attending provided valuable insight into applying the concepts in the classroom.
~Kyle Myres