I just stumbled across this thread- Let me congratulate you on a great lesson being taught. Also, as you've seen, you now know your mistake of starting this thread in the first place. This forum is absolutely full of people like rosy2. DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM or others like him. I am a 20 year veteran of one of the very pits you used footage of in the beginning of your clip. I've now made the transition to the screen. I can tell you this- the floor may not be around forever, but skills I learned in that pit are invaluable to me off the floor. Putting that aside, I applaud you for an innovative lesson, which may spark the interest of some students to pursue a career. No matter, you've found an interesting way to introduce the subject. Finally, do yourself a favor- Never come back to this thread again. Do not give any of these bitter shut-ins a reason to take a shot at you or your students. There is much info available here, but you will need to sift through a bunch of rosy's to find it. Best of luck
caroy, Great way to get students interested in the subject, regardless of floor here to stay or going away. Open outcry is alot of fun and will make a lasting impact on these youths. As you have been advised, disregard the negative sentiment on this board. They need to find other "proper forums" to express their negativity & grumpiness for whatever plagues them. You are sowing the seeds of financial literacy with these kids. Many years from now they will look back on this experience with fond memories and will be grateful that you were innovative enough to conjure up this idea for their benefit. Unfortuately I can't join you. If my current schedule wasnt so busy, I would be more than happy to phone in buy & sell orders. Best, J-Law
We will be doing this project three other times this semester with the other econ classes so I will give you an email the next time things roll around. All the best
I'm going to tell you why this is pointless. That's not what economics is. Determining why something trades at a certain price is what economics is. Far from randomly filling orders in a pit, teaching the definition of economics is FAR more important. The problem with most economics classes at the high school level is that no one knows what economics is, because they aren't qualified to teach the subject. If you explained economics in any manner other than, "The study of the proper allocation of scarce resources", then you haven't taught them economics yet. Ask the teacher what their definition is, and see if they give a misinformed answer, like, "There's no free lunch on Wall Street," which obviously is the wrong answer. Whoever gets it right is the only one that should be teaching. I went through 3/4's of my college curriculum before I grasped this definition, because it's applicable to any question in economics and also in finance. Trading games are fun, though, and in experimental econ in college was quite a bit more advanced than other courses I took, like english. A lot of special experiments in economics are available on lexis nexis, and other academic journals. The game of filling futures orders probably is not beneficial.
I think you really should change it up to other games. There are hundreds out there. Futures orders, and trading in general, are not economics.
bwolinsky, <i>everybody</i> learns that economics is the "allocation of scarce resources" - it's the first sentence in every economics textbook ever written! The challenge is teaching kids what that <i>means</i>. Seeing how a futures pit works is definitely not pointless - I disagree with you there - in some ways a futures pit is a microcosm of the larger economy (note: I said in some ways)