Hi Connie,
I remember you sent along something earlier that I don't
remember if I ever responded to or not. The best site
to track stocks is using http://stocks.wired.com/ Sony's
symbol is SNE and trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
The best possible way to teach your son about stocks is to have
him follow the stock by hand. Buy him 11"x17" chart paper and
pencils. Show him how to label the vertical axis using a
predicted price range and show him how to label the horizontal
access to represent every trading day. Every day in the morning
or evening, use the day's newspaper (not online) to record the open, high, low, and
close of the stock in addition to the volume. On the graph paper,
draw a line between the high and low with an intersecting bar
to the left of it for the open price and a intersectin bar to the
right for the closing price. There are plenty of online
sites that will do the graphing for you, but this will not
teach your son trading discipline, won't encourage familiarity
with the complexity of the patterns, and won't teach him about
the fundamentals of stock movements.
In addition, Sony has at regular intervals Annual General
Meetings of shareholders (AGMs) and Extraordinary General
Meetings of shareholders (EGMs). As a Sony shareholder, you will
be asked to participate in votes for particular issues that require
stockholder approval. They are an extraordinary source of information
for what is happening inside of a company.
Believe it or not, my first introduction to the market was with
a game called "Wall Street" that ran on my 1981 IBS 8086 machine.
It generated random market conditions and allows the player (me) to
allocate different levels of funds into oil & gas, currency, precious
metals, small cap, med cap, high tech, and several other areas. Extremely
interesting game. A local company out here in Orange County called
Interplay makes a Wall Street Trader 2000 game that I think is related.
This is about as close as you can get to understanding how real
world markets work. I'd recommend setting him up with a copy as
the "game" part makes it more appealing to a 10 year old.
As to Sony competitors, they are such a large corporation that
you would need to split up into particular markets when identifying
competitors. At some levels Sony competes with Microsoft, at others
they compete with Intel, and even still others they compete with Dell,
Compaq, and others. All this just in the computing & software space.
When you start adding in game machines, consumer electronics, handhelds,
movie, media, music, and entertainment, there's a whole lot of competition
out there.
Anywyas, good luck.
Greg
IddFam@cs.com wrote:
>
> Greetings:
> I am trying to gather information on Sony stock for my son Seth. He is 10
> yrs. old and wants to invest some of his money into Sony stock. I also
> wondered if you knew of any age appropriate materials that I could use to
> explain about investing to my son.
> Thanks,
> Connie Iddings
> Greetings:
> My son who is 10 years-old won a hundred dollar savings bond when he was
> five. He now wants to cash it in. I figured he would want to buy some
> computer or Playstation games. I was therefore surprised when he said he
> wanted to buy Playstation stock. I took this as a great learning opportunity.
> Can you send us any information on Sony's recent stock performance and maybe
> even some of their major competitors performance records? Also do you know of
> any other sources that I can go to, to get information about stocks and the
> market that might be closer to his grade-level and easier to understand? Any
> other tips for him, would be greatly appreciated.
> Sincerely,
> Connie Iddings
>
-- Gregory Alan Bolcer | gbolcer@endeavors.com | work: 949.833.2800 Chief Technology Officer | http://endeavors.com | cell: 714.928.5476 Endeavors Technology, Inc. | efax: 603.994.0516 | wap: 949.278.2805
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