The Vestavia Hills High School Economics Team has seen what some members would eagerly call bullish growth in the club size over the past few years, with the 2024-2025 club roster nearly doubling in size when compared to the amount of student economists from last year. Led by AP Economics teacher Steven Johnson and club President Andy Sheng (myself), the club revolves primarily around statewide and national competitions, pitting students’ financial literacy and economic planning abilities against other competing parties. Having won over seven thousand dollars in the past two school years from the National Economics Challenge and National Personal Finance Challenge, it is unsurprising that the club has seen such notable growth in recent years.
Contrary to typical belief that a knowledge of economics is reserved mainly for more mature students or settling adults, the club is overwhelmingly student-run. While composed largely of seniors taking AP Economics, the club is almost equally represented by juniors and even some ambitious sophomores. Whether motivated by opportunities to learn about the science of decision-making, the simulation of real-world management and investment scenarios, or the appeal of knowledge-based competitions’ cash prizes, the influx of interest that Economics Club has seen is invigorating. Revered economist Thomas Sowell highlights a fundamental truth of our world and the economic systems that govern it: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” To our new and returning members—we are excited that in the trade-off-based nature of selecting which club to join, you have chosen Econ Club as your first pick.
In years past, the competition season began in the springtime, but this year the club has already begun competition in the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game. Equipped with $100,000 (paper) dollars per team, competitors are tasked with generating the most equity they can in a 10-week period. Options for investment are slightly abridged, with only standard stock and ETF options being available for market trading or short selling. But it is rightfully limited—options trading or atypical investment strategies in penny stocks and cryptocurrencies distract from the objective of the competition. Over this ten-week period, it is certain that regardless of whether the numbers in team portfolios are green or red, competitors will have gained a better understanding of how our free market system works in the real world. For many, competitions like this are the pipeline to harnessing investment later in life as a scientific tool of wealth rather than a haphazard series of spontaneous gambles.
In all of the years that the Economics Team (those in the club who participate in competitions) has competed in the National Personal Finance Challenge and the National Economics Challenge, we have yet to break a perfect streak of State Champions year after year. The eagerness and growing interest that the club has seen at the start of the 2024-2025 school year foreshadows yet another year of domination in the State, and perhaps even on a national scale. Keep your eyes peeled—in a few years time, many of the novice economists competing for the high school will have dominated markets in the real world.
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