Haddonfield Memorial High School students have long had the opportunity to explore the world of finance in the school’s investment club.
But while the club has been a fixture of the school for many years, senior Henry Cowan has created a new and unique group known as the Haddonfield Investment Fund.
Students in the current club compete against other state schools and use fake money to learn about personal finance and economics, stock market trading and buying bonds. Cowan wanted to take that a step farther.
“We decided we wanted to take it to the next level by using real money,” he said. “So we started exploring that.”
Cowan originally got the idea for his investing club by learning from a cousin about a similar program at Penn State, the Nittany Lion Fund. That student-run fund enables participants at the university to take a semester-long course on handling the fund’s money and its investments.
Cowan began his search for something similar to Penn State’s fund as a sophomore, bringing the idea to borough officials and school district leaders, and eventually to the state’s Board of Education. The Haddonfield Investment Fund will operate as its own entity apart from the school, with money managed through the Haddonfield Educational Trust, which handles many of the high-school’s investments, grants and scholarships.
Students will not only use real money, but also build an investment portfolio. The goal is to gain hands-on experience in the financial world.
“The students are super serious about it …” said school advisor Rachel Friedman. “These students were interviewed. They went through a real interview process … They came in professionally. They know that this is serious business, and they’re committing to this club.
“Everybody is, I think, sort of taking ownership of it and their role in it to make it a success, knowing that it’s a long-term thing.”
Though students will be in charge of the fund, Friedman will help by overseeing investments, and professional financial advisor Adam Puff will be responsible for conducting the trades.
“The adults who are involved in this from the town are just over-the-top excited and supportive and providing their professional services for free,” Friedman noted, “just taking the joy and helping the students.”
The Haddonfield Investment Fund is the first and only program of its kind so far at a New Jersey public school. Sponsors will invest its initial funds, and once the students begin their own investing and build a substantial portfolio, a portion of earnings will be donated to the school to create scholarships and other benefits for future students.
While the fund will not be ready to make donations to the school for several years, plans are in place to ensure its success. Students will be separated into teams, each with a leader and two members. At each monthly meeting, they will pitch ideas on changing investment positions, whether that means buying more of an existing or completely new stock, selling or trimming.
The executive board of the fund will then vote on the pitch and the decision will be presented to the Haddonfield Educational Trust.
“So there’s always going to be an adult, a professional investment advisor … who will be examining the trade and making sure that it’s reasonable,” Cowan pointed out, “so just ensuring donors that they’re funding will not be wasted.”
Cowan believes that if other schools in the state have the resources to create their own funds, students should take the opportunity to be involved.
“It was very difficult,” he acknowledged of the fund he created. “We had to go through a lot of different loopholes, a lot of different problems that we had to work through … I think if other high schools had the ability to do it, I would definitely encourage them to do so.”
