A game meant to im­prove the fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and stock trad­ing savvy of lo­cal stu­dents is paving the way for greater in­vest­ment from this re­gion in both re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Charielle Plow­den, coun­try man­ag­er of Wiz­dom­CRM Caribbean, said that fol­low­ing the im­mense suc­cess of the Wiz­dom­CRM Vir­tu­al Stock Mar­ket Game, the com­pa­ny re­cent­ly launched the Stock Trade Alert Plat­form. That plat­form is geared to­wards in­form­ing its users about ma­jor moves be­ing made by sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness own­ers and com­pa­nies on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

“We’ve ac­tu­al­ly in­te­grat­ed with Open AI, which we know is the com­pa­ny that brought us Chat­G­PT. We’ve built our tech stack on their tech stack to al­low for per­sons to now utilise no­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy to get ac­cess to US ex­ec­u­tive trade. So, for ex­am­ple, if Bill Gates or Mark Zucker­berg takes a trade or they buy a com­pa­ny or their busi­ness­es buy or sell, par­ents will now get no­ti­fi­ca­tions to help them with their trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ties,” Plow­den ex­plained in a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view.

She said the ap­pli­ca­tion could al­so be used in a lo­cal set­ting, as it could sim­i­lar­ly fol­low mar­ket moves made by lo­cal ex­ec­u­tives.

“So it’s a way to re­al­ly un­der­stand the US mar­ket in a very in­ti­mate way. And if we want to use a lo­cal ex­am­ple, if a mem­ber of Sab­ga fam­i­ly were to pur­chase stocks in ANSA McAL based on their con­fi­dence in the busi­ness, there would be a no­ti­fi­ca­tion that will tell you that this per­son just bought stocks,” said Plow­den.

The Wiz­dom­CRM is con­fi­dent this app will have as much of a pos­i­tive im­pact on the lo­cal trad­ing mar­ket as the stock game, which has made sev­er­al com­pa­nies across the pub­lic and pri­vate pay at­ten­tion to stu­dents who par­tic­i­pate in the game which spans pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions.

In March, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd spon­sored 1,100 stu­dents, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a re­cent cy­cle of the game, while ANSA McAL, Re­pub­lic Bank, Sco­tia­bank and Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd have been among the com­pa­nies that have shared spon­sor­ship and have adopt­ed schools or stu­dents who par­tic­i­pate in the game Some in­vest­ment com­pa­nies have shown ac­tive in­ter­est in top stu­dents in the com­pe­ti­tion.

“We have CEOs from in­vest­ment firms com­ing to our award cer­e­mo­ny to look for their next tal­ent pool and look­ing for per­sons that they can now hire. So that’s just some of the ways that we have been mak­ing an im­pact,” said Plow­den, who point­ed out that the top stu­dent in the game’s re­cent cy­cle, Al­loy Sam­my of Bish­op’s High School, To­ba­go, has stat­ed in­ter­est in be­com­ing a stock­bro­ker.

She said this in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion au­gured well for the in­vestor mar­ket.

“In terms of a na­tion­al scale, now that we have a more ed­u­cat­ed fi­nan­cial­ly em­pow­ered gen­er­a­tion com­ing up, the na­tion­al ben­e­fits are there be­cause more peo­ple are go­ing to buy stocks of those list­ed com­pa­nies, in­creas­ing their val­ue. More peo­ple are now go­ing to have more mon­ey when they buy or sell those stocks and they get the div­i­dends and there will be more mon­ey flow­ing in­to our econ­o­my as well. So there’s less re­liance on so­cial ser­vices. We are elim­i­nat­ing pover­ty and cre­at­ing gen­er­a­tional wealth,” said Plow­den.

She ex­plained the stock mar­ket game was first cre­at­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion put out a pub­lic no­tice for dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives which could help stu­dents while in-per­son school­ing was not pos­si­ble.

“When the world was thrust in­to a dig­i­tal space, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in T&T put out a re­quest for dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives to en­gage stu­dents while they were at home. We know that gam­i­fi­ca­tion learn­ing is a fun way to en­gage stu­dents and fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy has been some­thing that has not been taught to us. So we would have de­vel­oped a stock mar­ket game plat­form, which we would have put for­ward to the min­istry and they loved it,” said Plow­den.

Sharon Man­groo from the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment gave the game an added push by get­ting it in­to sev­er­al schools na­tion­wide.

In Jan­u­ary, the game ex­pand­ed to Guyana with Bar­ba­dos, and Ja­maica set to come on board in the com­ing months.

“Right now, we’re ex­pand­ing at such a rapid rate. We are in Guyana ful­ly. We on­ly went there in Jan­u­ary, and we have 2,122 stu­dents. We are in Bar­ba­dos, which is Sep­tem­ber com­ing, and Ja­maica will start in Jan­u­ary 2025,” said Plow­den, who added the com­pa­ny was even eye­ing mov­ing in­to the Latin Amer­i­ca mar­ket.

While the game was de­vel­oped in re­sponse to the min­istry’s re­quest, Plow­den said it was par­tial­ly in­spired by the cur­rent set-up of T&T’s Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

“As we know there’s a her­itage part which is es­sen­tial­ly to cre­ate gen­er­a­tional eq­ui­ty so that our young gen­er­a­tion could ben­e­fit from the oil re­serves and the rev­enue that we gen­er­ate from en­er­gy prices,” said Plow­den, ex­plain­ing that “some 42 per cent of in­ter­na­tion­al eq­ui­ties are in that fund. There­fore it makes sense for our younger gen­er­a­tion to learn fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy about trad­ing on the stock mar­ket so that they can un­der­stand the com­bi­na­tion that is man­ag­ing their fu­ture mon­ey. “