PRE-K 4 & MAGNET APPS DUE THURSDAY!
On Friday, 57 Albany High students proved their wealth of knowledge in the world of finance by placing third—both as a team and as a school—in the 2026 Junior Achievement Stock Market Challenge!
Hosted at UAlbany, this year's competition featured 117 teams from 12 schools, and 15 of those teams were comprised of Albany High students enrolled in College in the High School business classes.
A four-student Falcon team—Alina Mujic, Francis Raguindin, Yomar Santiago, and Isabella VanFonda—earned third place overall with a strong 39.65% return, growing a $1,000,000 starting portfolio into $1,396,475 through careful and strategic trading.
Albany High also received the third-place school award for our students’ collective performance.
“Today I had a great time learning new things,” said senior Jada Ford. “We’ve talked about stocks in school, but it was nice to actually do it.”
The annual challenge simulates the real stock market and allows students to buy and sell fictitious stocks. Each team included an asset manager, market analyst, portfolio manager and trade specialist who worked together with the goal of building the highest-value portfolio before the final bell.
Starting the game with one million dollars in their bank roll, teams worked collectively to navigate decisions in a volatile and ever-changing market. Every 60 seconds represented a new trading day, and students had to make quick, informed decisions, weighing the effects of news and world events as they bought, sold and traded.
“I learned a lot of things about business," said senior Mwajuma Kabwe. "I also learned you have to spend money to make money.”
Thank you to our Albany High staff who accompanied our students to this year’s competition—Christoper Austen, Kathryn Keary, Michelle Lewis, Lindsay Simmons, Colleen Multer and Tom Vacanti—and to Joleen Hanlon from Junior Achievement of Northeastern New York for making this unique learning experience possible!
We also appreciate Director of Career and Technical Education Maggie Palmeri and Superintendent Joseph Hochreiter for stopping by to cheer on our Falcons, and thank sponsors Alex Monticello from Monticello Licensed Real Estate Broker and Chris Wessell from PeopleWise LLC for their support.