Lesson 2.19, two days. Day 1: slides 1 to 14. Day 2: slides 15 to 22. The market is frozen at Round 8. Write "Closing bell, 1936" and the closing prices on the board before Day 1 from page 2 of Handout 02.14 - The Gilded Age Market Kit.md and keep them covered until slide 2. Slides 5 to 12 are kit page 5: one company per slide on 5 to 11, then the bank and Monopoly on 12. The leaderboard shows investor numbers only.
Do now (Day 1)
- Guess your final rank in this class: top third, middle, bottom third.
- One sentence: what one decision decided it.
Teacher notes
3 minutes. Hands for each third. Then uncover the board.
The closing bell, 1936
- RAIL 30. OIL 60. GAS 30. ELEC 40. STEEL 60. AUTO 60. RADIO 12.
- The market did not come back to 1929 for twenty five years, but it climbed a long way from the bottom.
- In 1933 the government closed every bank for a week, reopened the sound ones, and created deposit insurance.
- In 1935 Parker Brothers began selling Monopoly.
- Fill the Close column and the closing table. No trades. No interest at the bell.
Teacher notes
Image: a drawn brass bell over a 1936 newspaper front page.
Read the closing bell dispatch from kit page 3. Then uncover the leaderboard built from the collected ledgers, sorted by investor number; students check their total against it.
The top five
- Investor ___: $______. Investor ___: $______. Investor ___: $______. Investor ___: $______. Investor ___: $______.
- Class average closing total: $______. Class average return: ______ percent.
- Two rules: nobody is named unless they name themselves; nobody says "loser" about anyone.
Teacher notes
Read the top five and stop.
Your line
- Find your investor number. Write your closing total and your rank on the report template cover.
- Who is willing to say what they did?
Teacher notes
7 minutes for slides 2 to 4.
The reveal: RAIL, Pennsylvania Railroad
- Survived every panic. Paid dividends for more than a century.
- Went bankrupt in 1970 after merging with the New York Central, the largest bankruptcy the country had seen.
- Lesson: big and old is not the same as forever.
Teacher notes
Image: a steam locomotive on a stone bridge.
OIL, Standard Oil
- Broken into 34 companies in 1911.
- The pieces became Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Amoco and others, and their owners grew richer than before.
- Lesson: a company can be bigger than the government wants and still be a good business.
Teacher notes
Image: an oil derrick beside a row of kerosene lamps.
GAS, Consolidated Gas
- Became Consolidated Edison, which still sends New York its gas and electric bills.
- Lesson: boring and necessary pays every month.
Teacher notes
Image: a gas street lamp on a New York corner.
ELEC, General Electric
- Nearly died in 1893, then lit the country.
- One of the twelve original companies in the Dow Jones average of 1896, and in it for over a century.
- Lesson: a new technology's stock can crash and still be right about the future.
Teacher notes
Image: a Pearl Street lamp glowing in a dark office window.
STEEL, US Steel
- Still makes steel. Its share of the market shrank for a hundred years.
- Lesson: enormous on the first day is not a guarantee.
Teacher notes
Image: a steel bridge under construction.
AUTO, General Motors
- The largest company in the world by the 1950s. Bankrupt in 2009. Rescued and reorganized.
- Lesson: the best company of one era is not the best of the next.
Teacher notes
Image: a Model T on a dirt road, with a newer car far behind it.
RADIO, RCA
- Under $6 in 1921. Over $100 in September 1929. Under $3 in 1932.
- It took until the 1960s to matter again. Bought and broken up in 1986.
- Lesson: the hottest stock of a decade is usually the most expensive way to learn the word "bubble."
Teacher notes
Image: a 1920s radio set in a living room.
Students fill the reveal table on the report template as each slide goes up.
The bank, and Monopoly
- About nine thousand banks failed between 1930 and 1933. Their depositors lost their money.
- Deposit insurance, created in 1933, is why "the bank never fails" is true for you and was not for your great great grandparents.
- Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game in 1904 to teach that letting one person own everything hurts everyone else. Parker Brothers bought it in 1935 and sold it as Monopoly, a game about doing exactly that.
- The trust on our board in Round 2 is the thing her game was about.
Teacher notes
Image: a Monopoly board next to a 1904 patent drawing.
12 minutes for slides 5 to 12.
Three ledgers, by investor number only
- Investor ___ never sold: $2,618 in 1928, $926 in 1932, $1,926 at the bell.
- Investor ___ sold everything in October 1929 and put it in the bank: $1,949 at the bell. (In real life, would the bank have been there in 1933?)
- Investor ___ sold in the crash, then bought OIL, STEEL, AUTO and ELEC at the bottom in 1932: $5,949 at the bell.
- The two paths nobody wants: sold at the bottom, $926. Borrowed in 1928, $0.
- Read each one: what did they do, and what did it cost or earn?
Teacher notes
Image: three simple line graphs of a total across the ten columns: a mountain that comes most of the way back; a mountain that goes flat after 1929; a mountain that goes flat and then shoots up.
From the Paper Ledger's teacher key, or this class's real ledgers. 8 minutes with volunteers. End with: when you sold mattered more than that you sold; over eight rounds, luck matters a lot; over fifty years, habits matter more.
Entry 9 and closure (Day 1)
- The market is closed. My closing total in dollars. Why my number is what it is. What I know now that I did not know in 1870.
- 3-2-1: 3 companies and what happened next, 2 things the investors who did best did, 1 thing you would tell yourself in 1870.
- Tomorrow: the Investor Report. Bring your journal and your ledger.
Teacher notes
6 minutes for Entry 9, 4 for closure.
Do now (Day 2)
- Open your journal and your ledger's trade log. Circle the three decisions you are proudest of, or least proud of.
- Write the entry numbers on the report template cover.
Teacher notes
3 minutes.
The Investor Report: seven parts
- 1. Starting and closing total. 2. Percent return, with the formula.
- 3. Three decisions and why, each with a ledger number. 4. What the crash taught me.
- 5. One thing I would do differently. 6. The reveal table (done yesterday).
- 7. My revised personal budget with a savings line.
Teacher notes
4 minutes. Point at where each rubric criterion lives on the template.
Where the rubric lives
- Criterion 1, participation and journal: your ledger's trade log and your ten entries.
- Criterion 2, analysis and decisions: part 3.
- Criterion 3, emotional control: the grid and part 4.
- Criterion 4, math and reflection: parts 1, 2, 5, 6.
- Criterion 5, the revised budget: part 7.
Write parts 1 to 5
- Sources: your journal, your ledger, your grid, your Return Math handout. Nothing from memory.
- Part 2: write the formula out. Bottom of the fraction: 1,000.
- Part 3: every decision gets a number: shares, a price, or a round.
- 16 minutes.
Teacher notes
Circulate. A "got it" part 3 reads: "Entry 7: I sold 4 RADIO at 30 because I owed the broker $200 and had no cash. RADIO went to 3 in Round 8, so selling saved me $108, but I never bought anything at the bottom, so I missed AUTO going from 8 to 60."
Part 7: the revised budget
- Pull your Lesson 2.9 budget. Copy it into the "Before" column.
- Same income. Same needs.
- A savings line: add one or raise one. Put it before the wants. Pay it first.
- Adjust the wants until it balances. Two sentences: what changed and why the market made you change it.
Teacher notes
Image: the revision table with the savings line highlighted and an arrow moving it above the wants.
8 minutes. The rule that connects the topic: pay yourself first, then the wants.
Where the savings go
- First: a savings account. Since 1933 it is insured. It does not drop. A cushion for a bad month.
- Second, once the cushion is there: a spread of companies, held a long time. Time smooths the crashes; the never-sold ledger proved it.
- Grade 8 stretch: split your savings line into the two and name why.
Peer read and submit
- Swap. Check three boxes: the formula is written with 1,000 on the bottom; three decisions each have a number; the budget balances with savings before wants.
- Two comments, one specific. Get it back. Fix one thing.
- Staple the journal, the ledger, the grid, and Return Math behind the report. Self-assessment row. In the folder.
Teacher notes
6 minutes.
Closure (Day 2)
- Entry 10: my final percent return was ___. One sentence to my future self about money.
- Two investors read the sentence.
- Tomorrow: careers. And ten minutes of Round 2: it is 1925, you have a fresh $1,000, and you know what is coming.
Teacher notes
3 minutes.