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Stock Market Tracking Project
Grades 9-12 · 4 weeks
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A stock market tracking project turns real financial data into a math investigation about change, risk, and decision making. By following 5 stocks for 4 weeks, students can practice percent change, graph reading, averages, and data comparison using information from the real world. The goal is not to predict the market perfectly, but to learn how prices move and how investors describe performance. A clear dashboard with charts and tables helps make patterns easier to see and explain.
Key Facts
- Weekly return = (ending price - starting price) / starting price x 100%
- Portfolio value = sum of shares owned x current share price
- Average weekly return = sum of weekly returns / number of weeks
- Volatility can be estimated by the standard deviation of weekly returns
- Correlation ranges from -1 to +1 and describes how closely two stocks move together
- Diversification lowers risk when a portfolio includes assets that do not all move the same way
Vocabulary
- Stock
- A stock is a share of ownership in a company that can rise or fall in price.
- Return
- Return is the percent gain or loss on an investment over a specific time period.
- Volatility
- Volatility is a measure of how much an investment's returns vary over time.
- Correlation
- Correlation describes how strongly two sets of data, such as two stock returns, move together.
- Diversification
- Diversification is the strategy of spreading investments across different assets to reduce overall risk.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Using price change instead of percent return. A 20 stock and a $200 stock, so percent return is the fair comparison.
- Comparing stocks over different dates. Returns must use the same start and end dates, or the comparison does not measure the same time period.
- Calling the stock with the highest return the best choice. A stock may have a high return but also high volatility, so risk should be considered with performance.
- Assuming diversification means owning many similar stocks. If all 5 stocks are in the same industry and move together, the portfolio may still have high risk.
Practice Questions
- 1 A stock starts the week at 46. Calculate its weekly return as a percent.
- 2 A student portfolio has 2 shares of Stock A at 18, and 1 share of Stock C at $75. What is the total portfolio value?
- 3 Two stocks both gained 4% over 4 weeks, but Stock X changed smoothly while Stock Y jumped up and down each week. Which stock has higher volatility, and why does that matter for a portfolio?