Many high schoolers don’t even think about investing for their future, but that is not the case for juniors Oscar Hong, Joe Zhang and Will Hurley.

These juniors founded Investment Club in October 2018, where they teach real life investing skills and financial literacy to their peers. Meetings are advised by French teacher Lauren Osepchuck and held every Thursday after school in H119.

Every week Hong, Zhang and Hurley create an in-depth and interactive presentation about a specific investing topic. These topics can range from portfolio management to options trading.

“Every Wednesday night you can find us on Skype, Facetime, Google Hangouts,” Hong said. “Wherever it is, we are always grinding. We have got to prepare the best of the best.”

Hong, who is a member of DECA and the National Business Honor Society, first became interested in business when he took Business Fundamentals his freshman year. Throughout his years at Algonquin, he has accumulated a lot of business knowledge and is particularly passionate about investing. A main reason why he, Zhang and Hurley wanted to start the club was to educate other students.

“We noticed not a lot of students have real world investing knowledge,” Hong said. “It is a true life skill. The earlier they start, the more wealth they can compound.”

Zhang first got interested in business by reading Incorporated magazine in middle school. Similar to Hong, he is a part of of DECA and runs Businesses With Stories, a business publication about entrepreneurs.

“I think all of us wanted to start Investment Club as freshmen, but we never got around to it,” Zhang said. “Now that we have more influence and knowledge, we were more confident about finally starting the club.”

Hurley took Business Fundamentals as a freshman with Hong and became interested in investing due to a stock market game he played in class.

“As soon as I saw that I was losing money [in the game], I was like, ‘Nope this isn’t happening,’ so I got really motivated to stop losing money,” Hurley said. “The more motivation I had, the more I wanted to learn.”

The Investment Club is currently trying to organize an investment field trip, although the location is currently unknown. They also hope to start an investing competition against other schools. Their goal is to further highschool students knowledge and passion for investment.

“If they don’t win [the investment game], they still win knowledge,” Hong said. “Investment Club gets the dub.”