Students select hot stocks

For high school students, life can center around getting good grades, making the team - or theoretically quadrupling your money in the stock market in a matter of weeks.

OK, so the latter example is a stretch.

But that's not the case for a trio of teenagers from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md.

Jason Belinkie, Andrew Liebeskind, and Oliver Tannous teamed up to turn an imaginary $100,000 into $445,590 during a 10-week period that began last October. Their 345.6 percent return dwarfed the 7.1 percent rise of the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same period.

The teens formed one of more than 5,000 school-sponsored teams that took part in a stock tournament run by cable network CNBC. For winning the contest, they will decide how to manage 200 shares of General Electric stock (valued at more than $20,000) which their school won Jan. 21 for their first-place performance.

Rounding out the top 5 teams: West Vancouver Secondary, British Columbia (254.2 percent return), Taunton High School, Taunton, Mass. (225.6 percent), Spratley Middle School, Hampton, Va. (196.2 percent), and Richboro Junior High, Richboro, Pa. (182.5 percent).

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