Stock Market Shout-Out
Turn your classroom into a 1980s trading floor for ten glorious, noisy minutes. Brokers shout offers, news flashes hit the market, and prices swing as everyone scrambles to buy low and sell high. Supply and demand stops being a diagram and becomes a feeling.
How to run it
Five fictional companies are listed (cards below). Every student starts with £100 (tracked on paper) and 2 random share slips. The teacher is the Exchange: current prices live on the board, starting at the prices shown on the company cards.
Trading happens standing up, anywhere in the room. Students trade shares with EACH OTHER at any price both agree on: shout, haggle, swap slips and update your own cash total honestly. The board price is only a guide; the real price is whatever someone will pay.
Every 90 seconds, the teacher rings an imaginary bell and reads a news event card. Then the teacher adjusts board prices according to the card. Traders react instantly: dump the airline, grab the chocolate maker, regret everything.
After 10 minutes, trading stops. Everyone values their portfolio: cash plus (shares held x final board price). Highest total wins Trader of the Year. Bankruptcies get a round of applause.
Ask: why did prices move before the teacher even changed the board? (Traders anticipated: demand shifted on expectations.) Introduce the vocabulary formally: supply, demand, equilibrium, speculation, market sentiment. Connect to why real firms care about share price at all: raising finance, takeover risk, reputation.
🖨 5 company cards (starting prices)
| Company | What it does | Start price |
|---|---|---|
| Choco Bloc plc | Chocolate bars sold in every corner shop | £10 |
| FlyCheap Air plc | Budget airline, thin margins, big fuel bills | £8 |
| GreenVolt plc | Builds wind farms; growth depends on government policy | £12 |
| TrendThreads plc | Fast-fashion online retailer loved by teenagers | £6 |
| SteadyBank plc | Boring but reliable high-street bank | £15 |
🖨 8 news event cards (read one every 90 seconds; adjust board prices as shown)
- 1. Heatwave melts chocolate in delivery vans nationwide. Choco Bloc -£3.
- 2. Oil price crashes: airline fuel is suddenly cheap. FlyCheap Air +£4.
- 3. Government announces huge subsidies for wind power. GreenVolt +£5.
- 4. Viral documentary exposes fast-fashion waste. TrendThreads -£3.
- 5. Interest rates rise sharply. SteadyBank +£3, TrendThreads -£1 (customers cut spending).
- 6. Choco Bloc launches a wildly popular new bar with a football star. Choco Bloc +£5.
- 7. Volcanic ash cloud grounds flights across Europe. FlyCheap Air -£4.
- 8. Rumour: SteadyBank is about to be taken over at a premium. SteadyBank +£4. (Optional twist next flash: rumour denied, -£5.)
🖨 Broker rules (project or read aloud)
- You may only trade standing up. Sitting brokers are on lunch break.
- Every trade needs a handshake and both traders updating their own records honestly.
- You may not rip, hide or forge share slips. The Exchange (teacher) can audit anyone.
- All trades freeze while a news flash is being read.
- Final wealth = cash + (shares x final board price). Honesty audit applies to the top three.
Variations
- Insider round: secretly show two students the next news card before reading it. Reveal afterwards what insider trading did to the market, and why it is illegal.
- Broker pairs: one partner trades in the pit, the other manages the records at a desk; swap at half-time. Mirrors front office and back office roles.
- Dividend rule: holders of SteadyBank get £1 per share when a bell rings twice, rewarding calm long-term investors over frantic traders.
Teacher tips
- Warn the neighbouring classroom in advance. This game reaches genuine trading-floor volume, and that is by design.
- Deliberately mis-time one news card so a rumour spreads before you read it. The pre-move in prices is your best debrief material.
- Keep the maths self-managed. Auditing only the top three finishers keeps everyone roughly honest without slowing the game.
The Business School is a live simulation where your class runs rival firms for a full lesson — pricing wars, hiring, crises, negotiations. Free teacher demo, no installs, students join with a PIN.