Teaching students about dollars makes a lot of sense

On this particular afternoon, the 12 students are a picture of calm - none of the anguished faces that were photographed on the floor of the stock exchange, none of the angst of someone whose portfolio had just taken a nosedive. They're kids, after all, and for some of them, the market is actually a game: They participated in the Stock Market Game sponsored by the Maryland Council on Economic Education, coming in first in their region last year. The council, which promotes teaching financial literacy from an early age, gives contestants a theoretical $100,000 to play in the market and provides materials to help in picking stocks.

They're just beginning to start working on this year's stock game, but you can bet they'll be taking an appropriately conservative approach. Even last year, their portfolio leaned toward commodities like gold and silver and nonflashy companies like Kellogg and Lockheed Martin.

Sean O'Keefe, for one, is bullish on energy, especially of the alternative kind, and basics rather than glitz.

"Renewable energy is going to be something government and the private sector is going to be investing in," he said. "And I'm thinking in terms of needs rather than wants."

Last summer, he and Sinha worked as interns for a credit counseling service and saw firsthand the perils of financial overextending. "People who are in so much debt, they can't get out of it," he said. "People who are a little over their heads."

While he and his classmates seem poised to make better financial decisions, perhaps the biggest lesson out of the current turmoil is how much easier it is to see mistakes in retrospect than in real time. Perhaps, when it comes to the market, all exuberance is irrational.

"It's hard to be a pessimist," O'Keefe said, "in a room of optimists."