Charles Reinhard (standing, left) and Malik King (standing, right) talk with the Investment Camp kids at PS 154. Charles Reinhard (standing, left) and Malik King (standing, right) talk with the Investment Camp kids at PS 154.
Volunteer Spotlight:
Lehman Brothers' Investment Camp
Money talks – and in the Harlem Children’s Zone, kids are learning to speak the lingo.
With the help of employees from Lehman Brothers, several HCZ sites are holding weekly sessions of “Investment Camp,” where kids learn about personal finance issues, as well as creating – and potentially profiting from – their own stock portfolios.
“The kids are learning not just how money works, but how it can work for them,” said Steve Alper, Managing Director of the Investment Solutions Group at Lehman Brothers.
Alper notes that it is gratifying for him and the other Lehman Brothers volunteers to know that the knowledge the kids are getting will one day have an impact on their financial well-being as they grow up and have families of their own.
Investment Camp is held weekly at eight HCZ sites. Each site has a team of Lehman Brothers employees, who teach the kids about the world of banking, business, credit and investing. The students research 30 stocks and then present their findings to the entire group, which eventually votes to “buy” five specific stocks for the group’s $20,000 portfolio.
As the cycle proceeds, the teams monitor their stocks’ performances and can make some corrections “so they can learn from their mistakes,” said Alper.
At the end of the cycle, the kids are given the profits from their theoretical portfolios – and the bragging rights, if their team outperforms the other teams in the friendly agency-wide competition.
In addition to the weekly meetings, the Lehman Brothers volunteers take groups of participating kids on trips to the New York Stock Exchange trading floor and to the floor where Lehman Brothers’ traders work.
Bernadette Cordero, a Marketing Coordinator at Lehman Brothers, said the visits to the company’s trading floor are always memorable.
“When the double glass doors swing open,” she said. “The looks on the kids’ faces are priceless. Their faces light up.”
All of the teams follow the same basic curriculum, which was developed by Lehman Brothers employees for this project. In addition to covering basic topics, such as how a bank works, they also will explore wherever the “interactive dialogue” takes them, Alper says. “A team might talk about current events, looking at the real-life effects of, say, the rising price of oil,” said Alper. He notes that recently his site at TRUCE Fitness created an ad hoc business plan for a company that would compete with McDonald’s. “They really got it,” Alper says proudly.
The Lehman Brothers volunteers find the Investment Camp rewarding as well, said Alper. In addition to the satisfaction of giving back to others, Alper said, the Lehman Brothers volunteers who participate find they are improving their communication skills, since they are forced to explain the complex world of finance in a straightforward, compelling way to an audience that has little prior knowledge of the industry.
Charles Reinhard, Director of Portfolio Strategy at Neuberger Berman, a Lehman Brothers company, has been active in the Investment Camp for three years, teaching at PS 154. He noted that the curriculum that employees have created keeps the sessions from being too “lecture-y” and dry.
“The kids are fun and engaging,” he said, adding he gets great satisfaction from teaching them about things “that will be useful to them for the rest of their lives.”
Reinhard said the kids are particularly excited about potentially making money by picking stocks and have been pretty good stock-pickers.
“They don’t suffer from analysis paralysis,” he said, often picking companies they are familiar with, which happen to have good industry positions. He said that he would not be surprised to see some seek out careers on Wall Street one day.
One of the great benefits for the kids, he said, is that “they connect the dots in their own minds, satisfying their curiosity” about the worlds of investment and business. They also gain the long-term perspective of a good, patient investor, he said, who “gets rich slowly by continually investing.”
Cordero said the kids at her site, The Promise Academy Charter School, “are always so excited and ready to learn – their brains are like sponges.” She said she is thrilled when the kids learn a new concept. “When they get it, it’s just a phenomenal feeling.”