Student Wins U.S. Essay Contest — With ML's Support

By Laura Saunders Egodigwe

Contest winner Melissa Chan, right, with Eddy Bayardelle and Principal Stanley Teitel. Click for complete photo.

Did her "Wall Street with Merrill Lynch" elective class give a New York City high school student the edge over 340 competitors in a national essay contest? Her teacher and principal think so.

Melissa Chan, a senior at Stuyvesant High School who is planning a career in international business, won the "InvestWrite" competition's high school division this month for her essay on investing in the stock market.

The competition is sponsored by an affiliate of the Securities Industry Association, the Foundation for Investor Education, which also administers the Stock Market GameTM, a nationwide educational program for students that Merrill Lynch supports at Stuyvesant and other schools.

Winning the competition came as a complete surprise to Ms. Chan, a participant at Stuyvesant in the "Wall Street With Merrill Lynch" financial education program. "I'm shocked," Ms. Chan said during a celebratory pizza party with her class.

"Wall Street With Merrill Lynch" is part of the firm's Investing Pays Off®Investing Pays Off® program, which aims to prepare young people with the know-how essential for financial and career success.

George Kennedy, who teaches the Merrill Lynch-sponsored class, and Principal Stanley Teitel sounded less surprised, perhaps because Stuyvesant had a winner last year as well. They attributed the wins to motivated students and to the school's partnership with Merrill Lynch.

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"Merrill Lynch does a terrific job in terms of preparing the kids," Mr. Teitel said. "I think the enrichment activities really inspire the kids so that when the opportunity arrives for the Stock Market Game they do a good job."

The students have been motivated by the game, Mr. Kennedy said, and the essay competition "is an excellent opportunity to focus on writing for economic and investing topics."

Ms. Chan's win was announced in class January 18 by Kathy Floyd, executive director of the foundation's Stock Market Game™ program. As classmates applauded and her parents beamed, Ms. Floyd presented Ms. Chan with a certificate and announced prizes, including a laptop computer, a $1,000 savings bond and trip to either Disney World or New York City with her parents.

Representing Merrill Lynch at the ceremony were FVP Eddy Bayardelle, head of Global Philanthropy, and Director Jeff Tewlow, head of GMI's Latin America, Emerging Europe Equity Sales Desk, and a Stuyvesant alumnus who has overseen the program for more than nine years.

"Melissa's essay and her knowledge of the financial markets is very impressive," Mr. Tewlow said. "Melissa and her classmates are learning concepts I did not study until business school."

"We are proud of Melissa's accomplishment and applaud the InvestWrite Competition and its goal of encouraging kids to apply their classroom learnings to real-world investing scenarios," Mr. Bayardelle said. "Wall Street With Merrill Lynch, the Stock Market Game Program and InvestWrite are excellent programs that help create the next generation of savvy investors and business leaders."

Merrill Lynch has sponsored the "Wall Street With Merrill Lynch" program at Stuyvesant since 1998. In the fall and spring semesters, students with a strong interest in economics and investing get classroom instruction, hear from Merrill Lynch guest speakers and take trips to the Merrill Lynch trading floor and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

In the InvestWrite essays, students apply their knowledge of saving and investment principles to an investment scenario.

"The InvestWrite competition challenges the students to take the knowledge they gained during the Stock Market Game competition and apply critical thinking skills to replicate a real-world investment situation," Ms. Floyd said. "Feedback from teachers around the country has been terrific. Many say InvestWrite helps them understand saving and investing better while improving their students' work and study skills."

More than 9,000 students from 680 classrooms across the country participated this fall in three divisions based on age. Ms. Chan was among three first-place winners chosen from a division. Teachers participating in the program judged the first round of the essay competition. Independent, volunteer judges drawn from industry, education and local communities then chose winners from among 944 essays submitted by the teachers.

Ms. Chan's essay demonstrated her investment knowledge by speculating on the risks that can affect a positive, long-term financial outcome. Her entry, "The Investment Race," compared two stocks, Google and Johnson & Johnson, using the analogy of the "tortoise and the hare" fable.

The tortoise was Johnson & Johnson, with its healthy annual growth rates, a high dividend yield and the chance to benefit from aging baby boomers. Google was Ms. Chan's hare. Despite high earnings per share and a large price-earnings ratio, "One has to wonder if the growth rate and high stock price is sustainable," Ms. Chan wrote in her essay, adding that competitors and new technologies could bring down the stock price.

She concluded, "As a young investor with very little capital I am willing to risk, my preference is for steadier, albeit more modest growing stock."