Mason Wilson ’27 Builds Winning Investment Portfolio, Places 1st in Iowa and 8th Nationally in Essay Competition
New York, NY, 4/29/2025
As Warren Buffett once said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” That idea is at the heart of Mason Wilson’s winning essay, which emphasized the value of building financial stability through informed investing.
MASON, a tenth-grade student at Hillcrest Academy in Kalona, Iowa, is planting the seeds for a financially secure future. His thoughtful, long-term investment plan earned a prestigious 1st in Iowa and 8th place win nationally in the SIFMA Foundation’s Fall 2024 InvestWrite® competition, the nation’s premier youth financial writing challenge.
Chosen from thousands of entries, Mason’s essay demonstrated a clear understanding of diversification, long-term investing, and risk—core concepts that define smart financial decision making. Mason and teacher Marcus Miller were honored by the SIFMA Foundation in a ceremony held on April 29, 2025.
InvestWrite is the capstone to the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game™, a curriculum-based simulation in which students manage a hypothetical $100,000 portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and cash. The program has reached more than 23 million students since 1977 and is widely recognized for improving academic achievement in math, economics and personal finance.
“We’re thrilled to celebrate Mason for this outstanding achievement,” said Melanie Mortimer, President of the SIFMA Foundation. “This is a powerful example of how financial education helps young people take control of their futures. By understanding long-term investing, students like Mason are building not just portfolios, but real financial confidence, know-how and independence.”
Each year, InvestWrite challenges students to apply what they’ve learned in the Stock Market Game to a real-world investing scenario. Thousands of financial professionals across the country volunteer to judge the essays, selecting winners who demonstrate depth of knowledge, critical thinking, and a practical vision for financial independence.
Amidst rapid growth of new online investing tools and social media Finfluencers, SIFMA Foundation has stepped up its efforts to provide tools for individuals to understand the fundamentals of riskmanaged investing. Offered free of charge at www.stockmarketgame.org, SMG InvestQuest is an online, 30-minute investing simulation that spans five years of real market activity and challenges users to allocate a hypothetical investment portfolio in response to news and industry trend reports. SMG InvestQuest emphasizes asset allocation, portfolio diversification, and long-term investing. It is available online anytime to individuals, families, and educators who want to try their hand at learning or teaching investing basics.
Additionally, in response to growing demand for families to build their financial savvy and engage in educational summer fun, SIFMA Foundation is launching The Stock Market Game Summer Session. Offered June 30 – August 8, 2025, SMG Summer Session is a free, national investing competition in which family members can challenge each other as individuals or teams. Youth participants are eligible to compete for prizes, receive certificates of completion, and build essential financial skills over the summer.
“Our summer and digital programs extend these opportunities beyond the classroom and into everyday life,” Mortimer added. “Whether through SMG InvestQuest or our SMG Summer Session, we are creating more pathways for young people and their families to learn, grow, and achieve their financial dreams.”
In the Fall essay writing competition, 4th–12th grade students were asked to reflect on their Stock Market Game portfolios and consider the following questions: “Was your portfolio diversified? If so, how? If not, how could you make it more diversified for long-term financial success?” Students were challenged to explain their investment strategy and recommend a future approach to saving or investing that reflects their understanding of a sound, diversified financial plan.
MASON’S WINNING ESSAY
Participating in the Stock Market Game was an exciting experience that helped me learn about the stock market, investing, and how to manage a portfolio. It gave me the chance to act like a real investor and make decisions about where to put my money. While playing, I learned that market changes, research, and understanding risk all influence investment decisions. My choices in the Stock Market Game were affected by things like how the stock market was performing at the time, as well as ideas I learned about the importance of balancing different types of investments. These events and lessons helped me understand how to build a successful portfolio. For my Stock Market Game portfolio, I chose to invest in a mix of tech, gas stations, media, bitcoin investors, and food stocks. I thought these areas were a good mix because they seemed to have potential for growth while still being somewhat stable. I bought shares in well-known tech companies like Apple and Microsoft because they were doing well and were expected to continue growing. I also added Tesla and Nvidia, a couple of reliable companies in the tech sector, for some stability. Lastly, I invested in a few bitcoins investing companies, believing that this sector would grow if Trump were elected. As I continued to track my investments, I realized that my portfolio was mostly focused on tech, and I had less investment in other sectors. This imbalance showed when the tech market faced some challenges, it caused my portfolio to lose value. For example, when tech stocks like Apple and Nvidia dropped, my portfolio suffered because a large portion of my investments were in tech. This made me realize that having too much of my money in one area, even if it’s a strong sector, can be risky. But when the tech market was doing very well, I sold some of my stocks, making lots of money, and held on to Nvidia hoping it would stay up until the end, which has so far helped me stay in second place. Through this experience, I began to understand the importance of diversification. Diversification means spreading your investments across different sectors so that if one area of the market struggles, you don’t lose too much money overall. If I had invested in more sectors, like energy or healthcare, I could have balanced out the losses from tech stocks with gains in other areas. For example, when tech stocks fell, investments in the energy sector might have helped stabilize my portfolio. I learned that having a variety of investments can protect against big losses. Diversification is key to long-term financial success. It helps reduce risk and allows your investments to grow steadily over time. If you only invest in one or two areas, your portfolio is more likely to be affected by changes in those sectors. However, when you spread out your investments you are less likely to experience large losses, and you can take advantage of opportunities in different markets. This is important because it can help you build wealth in the long run. Participating in the Stock Market Game taught me many important lessons about investing and risk management. While my initial portfolio was focused mostly on tech, I realized that this wasn’t the best strategy because it left me exposed to market changes. When I then decided to diversify my portfolio more, I saw less fluctuations, and more steady growth overall, and if I had diversified right away, I would have been set up more ideally for the rest of the competition. This Stock Market Game has given me my first taste of investing in stocks, and I can say that I feel good about investing in the future thanks to the game.
About the SIFMA Foundation The SIFMA Foundation is committed to closing the opportunity gap by fostering greater knowledge of the financial markets for young people of all backgrounds. Drawing on the support and expertise of educators and the financial industry, the Foundation provides financial education to strengthen economic opportunity across communities and increase awareness of the benefits of the global marketplace. Since 1977, the Foundation’s flagship program, The Stock Market Game™, has guided more than 23 million students on their path to financial independence by building their life skills, improving academic achievement, and boosting their social-emotional learning. For more information on the SIFMA Foundation, visit www.sifma.org/foundation.
About InvestWrite® InvestWrite® is a culminating activity for Stock Market Game students that extends their classroom learning with a written challenge to address real-world financial issues. Students apply what they have learned in the Stock Market Game – critical thinking, portfolio analysis, and research on current events and market trends—and develop a long-term saving and investing strategy to achieve their goals and position themselves for financial success. Over 280,000 students have written essays reviewed by tens of thousands of teachers and more than 56,000 volunteer judges. Financial professionals volunteer their time each year to serve as essay reviewers and ensure young people are exposed to the essentials of personal finance early in life. For more information about InvestWrite®, visit investwrite.org.
Contacts: Michael Sherman, SIFMA Foundation, msherman@sifma.org and Carolyn Gasbarra, Edelman, carolyn.gasbarra@edelmansmithfield.com