As Warren Buffett once said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” That idea is at the heart of Perry Sloan’s winning essay, which emphasized the value of building financial stability through informed investing.
Perry, a ninth-grade student at Green Mountain Valley School in Waitsfield, Vermont, is planting the seeds for a financially secure future. Her thoughtful, long-term investment plan earned a first place in Vermont and second-place win nationally in the Securities, Industries and Financial Market Association (SIFMA) Foundation’s fall 2024 InvestWrite competition, a national youth financial writing challenge.
CHOSEN FROM THOUSANDS OF ENTRIES
Chosen from thousands of entries, judges reported that Sloan’s essay demonstrated a clear understanding of diversification, long-term investing, and risk – core concepts that define smart financial decision-making. She and teacher Karin Sloan (Perry’s mom), advisor to the Investment Club, were honored by the SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Marketing Association) in a ceremony held in May 2025.
Here is Sloan’s award-winning essay:
“Should we buy SGMT” is not a sentence you would have heard from my friends and I last year. After a long day of race training, we probably would have been asking each other, “Should we get food from the lodge?” But now, we are more concerned about what we should buy or sell, and how much money we made that day. This is due to the excitement building from our new club about finance and stock investing. When two students at my school suggested the idea of a finance club where students could learn how to invest, I suggested the Stock Market Game since my older brother loved the experience of playing it at his school. We found a couple of advisors, and my job was to recruit more girls, which I am happy to say I was able to. For most of us, investing is relatively new, so we have been digging through materials supplied to us by the Stock Market Game and having discussions about how to use them. One of the most helpful lessons was about diversification.
Through the Stock Market Game, I learned that diversification is a way to help mitigate risk, for example from “bad luck” or a downturn in the economy, by investing in an assortment of stocks. An example of a diversified portfolio is one that holds investments in a variety of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, as well as being spread out among different industries and sectors. As a ski racer, I know first-hand how risk and external factors make a difference in your performance. I invest in a variety of equipment and wax, with the knowledge that different pieces of equipment perform better in different situations. This can be compared to an investor who has a variety of investments so that their portfolio is not reliant on one industry or stock and is more resilient.
DIVERSIFIED PORTFOLIO
I believe that I have a diversified portfolio. It is spread throughout 11 different industries, and has stocks in equity, mutual funds, and ETFs. I additionally aimed to invest in stocks that were considered “safe,” and some that were speculative. At 19.7% of my portfolio, I have the most money invested in companies associated with financial services. Services such as banks, investments, and insurance are at the heart of our economy, making it an industry that is likely to go up. Another large part of my portfolio is consumer cyclical, making up 15.8%. An example of a stock in this category that I chose to invest in was Walmart. In addition to the fact that the holiday season will likely boost sales, the increase in consumerism within the population leads me to believe that large brands such as Walmart will continue to rise.
Although I have stocks in numerous industries, I believe that one way to further diversify my portfolio would be to invest more in some of those industries. As an example, energy only makes up around 2.7% of my portfolio. I may want to invest more in the energy sector, as it has shown a trend of upward growth over the past few years and renewable energy specifically is projected to continue growing at an increasingly fast pace. My portfolio has more opportunities for diversification when it comes to types of investments. My portfolio is primarily equity and mutual funds. However, I am not invested in any bonds. Bonds are a good way for investors to preserve their money while investing and still making some interest off of it. It is a safe place to store your capital, providing a predictable income stream. I additionally believe that I could diversify my portfolio more by investing in more ETFs. ETFs offer a way to efficiently diversify your portfolio without having to select individual stocks, making them an appealing option for someone aiming to further diversify their portfolio.
INVESTED IN COMPANIES AND INDUSTRIES
Furthermore, I invested more in companies and industries that I felt I understood more. I believe that the more knowledge that one has of different industries, the further they are able to diversify as there are more companies that they feel comfortable buying stocks from. Due to this, another way to diversify my portfolio is to simply continue educating myself in the many different industries and sectors that companies are a part of.
When investing, there is also the question of how many different stocks, bonds, and funds would be enough to diversify well. In my reading about diversifying, I found an article written by Roni Israeli that discussed how some advisors say 26 stocks is enough while his analysis shows investors needing over 200 stocks to diversify. In that case, my portfolio could be diversified further by owning more index funds or buying up to 200 stocks.
DIVERSIFIED MY SKILL SET
Although the Stock Market Game taught me how to diversify my portfolio, it also diversified my skill set in general. Through this experience so far, I now know far more about the stock market and finance than I did before!
InvestWrite is the capstone to the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market GameTM, a curriculum-based simulation in which students manage a hypothetical $100,000 portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and cash. The program has reached more than 23 million students since 1977
Each year, InvestWrite challenges students to apply what they’ve learned in the Stock Market Game to a real-world investing scenario. Thousands of financial professionals across the country volunteer to judge the essays, selecting winners who demonstrate depth of knowledge, critical thinking, and a practical vision for financial independence.
SIFMA Foundation provides tools for individuals to understand the fundamentals of risk-managed investing. Offered free of charge at www.stockmarketgame.org, SMG InvestQuest is an online, 30-minute investing simulation that spans five years of real market activity and challenges users to allocate a hypothetical investment portfolio in response to news and industry trend reports.
