Brokerage houses are basically chasing pennies when the take the fine art of stock trading to our impressionable youth. They understand that there is little chance that the game will actually give these kids much more than a workable vocabulary and quite possibly a thrill or two in the process. What the ten week course will not be able to parse is the expertise and investment styles of the parents that will come into play for some of the participants.

I am fortunate enough to have a seventeen year old who is not only literal but conversational in a way that many his age are not. He knows that I write about this stuff and as a result I may be a good person to give him the edge in the game. To him it is logical to seek advice. The game however might see the input, however innocent, as parental kibitzing.

Seeking advice is a two way street. Good advice must come from someone trusted enough to take the blame if the advice was erroneous with the person who takes the advice also admitting, if unwittingly, that the results of the decision should be ultimately theirs. Just like in the real world, those fortunate to have accounts where brokers will actually use the vast research and analysis departments to give you the cutting edge, it it the investor who must make the decisions and the broker who must take the blame. In the real world, this is a difficult and precarious position to be in during stretches when the market is referred to as a "stock picker's market", when it is bearish, moving stubbornly downward, and when it is bullish. Yes, even when the market is on the rise, the ability to beat everyone else comes into play adding a new pressure to the investor/broker relationship.

No one should envy brokers and their damned if they do, damned if they don't existence. But these kids do not have the time to do the kind of research necessary to make anything more than a semi-educated guess which in offshore parlance is a wager. a bet, a gamble.

During the game, students are give a hypothetical $100,000. This money is invested into the market accompanied, as in my son's case, by some rudimentary economics words and theories. But giving them the language of the commentators rarely gives the students the savvy they need to adjust long term thinking into short term results, a skill that is one of the most difficult to learn, and doubly as troublesome to teach. Just as every armchair quarterback knows, commenting is different than playing.

Economists are this game's armchair quarterbacks. The dismal science is meant as a clinical observation of why people do certain things, react a certain way, and given the right stimulus, how they would react repeatedly. Economist merely provide that statistical analysis that helps Wall Street make more odds-friendly bets. During the market bubble and ultimate crash in the early part of this decade, economists led by the nation's top banker, a respected economist as well, watched in wonderment as the investor thinking was changed, seemingly overnight from exuberance to defeat and eventually to ennui. And it was economists controlling interest rates and money supply that enabled those vast changes in emotions and wealth. To a lesser extent, changes in fiscal policy in Washington had an effect but that is another story altogether but not without its share of the blame.

So when my student asked me for short term suggestions, I helped. I picked several companies crossing the screen via the pre-market crawler. Companies whose products and price/earnings ratios would never see a single investment dollar of mine were the likely candidates. These volatile stocks ranging from nanotechnology companies, cutting edge pharmaceuticals, the ethereal world of the internet to weapons of low destruction (such as Tasers) would provide a hefty return and, had they invested the day I handed him my picks, he would have been handsomely in the lead. Trouble was, they did not invest that day and now, some of those picks don't look as attractive. For instance, Google, one of my internet picks has seen a fifteen point move since then and is not likely to keep up such a torrid pace. Such is the stock market!

Many of these stocks suffer from lack of liquidity and that alone makes them dangerous places for real money. But pretend money is different but no less competitive. For that reason, I suggested he tie only twenty percent of his money into these high risk fliers. The remainder of his cash should I suggested, be put into exchange traded funds.

There is prevailing notion that suggests that if you take out all of the booms and busts, which according to Stephen Sachs of Rydex ETF, will give you a more normalized view of the markets, add in diversification, you can be assured of beating all market cycles instead of just one. That is long range thinking from a fund whose design is based on short term reactions. Traded all day long and priced throughout the trading session, these funds have offered investors what mutual funds lack - the thrill.

So I suggested he diversify using these funds, also not something I would do with my own money. These funds do serve a purpose for the skittish investor offering a basket of stocks in sectors that would require far too much research for the average person. ETFs do have some of the same transparency issues plaguing mutual funds with one exception, they charge higher fees by comparison across every share. Fund expenses tend to be much higher in ETFs although some of the tax consequences are handled differently. Because many of these funds are managed by big brokerage houses, ETFs can make what is called "in kind exchanges". These exchanges often offset the high cost of redemptions and long term capital gains that might have hidden capital gains.

ETFs are also faced with rebalancing issues as the index they attempt to track changes. But they do provide a good opportunity to invest in some very volatile overseas markets without the necessary research that would otherwise be needed. Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim ex-Japan all look as if they will grow consistently over the next quarter and that is about the length of time my son has to place his bets. I did offer some ETF listings that do index small-cap and value stocks traded here in America as well.

But let's not kid ourselves and our students. This game is a pleasant academic diversion that might just make economics a little easier to swallow. We should be honest with ourselves that this game is not a life lesson anymore than Texas Hold 'em is a sport.