Dear Stock Market Game Participants:

As The Stock Market Game program draws to a close for the Spring 2022 semester, it's important to revisit one of the first lessons reviewed with you - why is investing important? In order to fully tie the SMG program to the real-world, understand the importance of long-term investing and that true investing is not just for ten or fifteen weeks. Time is your biggest ally as an investor. The more time you have to invest, the longer your investment can compound, or grow in value. Compounding is a financial phenomenon that makes time work in your favor. It’s what happens when your investment earnings are added to your principal, forming a larger base on which earnings may accumulate. And as your investment base gets larger, it has the potential to grow faster.

The younger you are when you start investing, the more you will benefit from compounding. Let’s say you begin investing at age 25, putting $200 a month in a tax-deferred retirement plan earning 9%. Your friend starts investing in the same plan at age 45, but puts away twice as much money as you — $400 a month. At age 65, you will both have invested a total of $96,000, but your investment would have grown to over $800,000, while your friend’s investment would be worth roughly $250,000. The reason your investment has grown so much more than your friend’s — even though you both invested the same amount of money — is because of 20 extra years of compounding. So, start saving now (every little bit helps)!

A 9% return on your investment isn’t guaranteed (especially in this market), and if you invest in stocks, chances are your portfolio will earn more than 9% in some years and may even lose money in others. But, if you invest in stocks for the long term, history is heavily in your favor - the average annualized total return for the S&P 500 over the past 90 years is 9.8 percent.

This will be the last SMG Week Ahead for the Spring 2022 semester. We hope you found the weekly newsletters informative and enhanced your SMG participation. In order for the SIFMA Foundation team to continue to provide the best Stock Market Game experience possible, please take a few minutes to complete our End of Session Survey. We want to know what you like, don't like, and how we can improve. Summer is the time the SIFMA Foundation is able to make the necessary updates to our program to keep teachers and students returning year after year!

Have a great week ahead and great rest of the semester!

Best regards,

Elizabeth Reidel

National Director

SIFMA Foundation

[email protected]