The business game “PlayTheMarket” took place in schools throughout Germany – funded by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Three youngsters from Holzkirchen are in the semi-finals.
Holzkirchen –
In their first press conference, the three young people Dominic Stocks (16), Luca Hasbach (15) and Lukas Cahlik (16) smile nervously into their webcams, but in the past few months they have survived bigger things: In a simulation game on which the boys took part in their economics class at the Holzkirchner Gymnasium, they ran one of Germany's most successful fictitious companies.
The aim was to strengthen knowledge of corporate management.
Today, Friday, they compete against 21 other teams from all over Germany in the semifinals of "PlayTheMarket".
For this they travel to Würzburg.
Nine teams prevail there - and end up in the final in Munich at the end of July.
“The Stonks Mafia”, as the tenth graders have dubbed their team, have an even bigger goal in mind: a two-day trip to New York that the winning team can look forward to in the final.
"The winners are shown around the financial center there," explains Lukas, his eyes shining.
In one week: Planning for the entire fiscal year
Whether your company, which produces muesli bars for fitness studios, will get that far remains exciting.
But at least the youngsters fought their way into the semi-finals with determination and ambition - and made it into the top 22 of 578 teams.
The young people explain that it was not easy.
"In the business game, we had to plan an entire fiscal year in one week," says Luca.
The online preliminary round lasted a total of three weeks, i.e. three business years.
"This requires planning skills, but it also extremely promotes team competence."
This is clearly noticeable when dealing with each other.
Dominic explains about Lukas that he "helped a lot with the planning".
Dominic adds with a wink: "Lukas always managed to lead us to the topic when we started to distract ourselves." Lukas, in turn, praises Luca: "He calculated everything until it fit." And Luca thinks so Warm words for Dominic: "Actually, you are our walking calculator."
The semi-finals in Würzburg run for ten hours at a time
In the first round, they made the first decisions together, for example on the sales prices.
The boys explored the software, learned the basic rules and made a plan to align their company with quality, ecology and social responsibility.
The scoring system - The Stonks Mafia got 96 out of 100 possible points - takes these factors into account with different weighting.
The boys worked in three shifts, spent a fictional 4.7 million euros on advertising - and were successful.
"We were second in our market and 25th out of all 23 markets." Towards the end, they raised the prices, profits grew, and the three were invited to the semifinals.
Dominic, Luca and Lukas sweat there for ten hours today with their opponents.
"It's going to be stressful - we also have to eat," jokes Lukas.
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