By LOU HATTEK

By LOU HATTEK

Rappahannock News Staff Writer

Imagine being a high school student with $500,000 to invest in the stock market.

The choices are yours, as are the profits. You make the decisions, and you suffer the losses if you pick the wrong stocks for your portfolio.

But the stakes are big — at the end of a four-month competition, the student who makes the most money through his or her transactions wins a five-day vacation in the Bahamas and a $1,000 scholarship. Throughout the competition, the 50 top performers each month receive a $50 prize.

Those are the stakes in the second annual AT&T Collegiate Investment Challenge. This year there is a high school division, and the Rappahannock chapter of the Future Business Leaders of America are going to challenge the pros on Wall Street — and their peers across the country.

For the students, the competition is a practical exercise in the workings of the stock market. The investors have access to brokers through a toll-free “800” number to make their transactions.

They receive updated prices on any of the 5,000 publicly traded companies whose stock is included in the game, and their buy and sell orders are executed instantaneously — just like on Wall Street. They can call anytime during regular business hours, and the brokers standing by at the telephone bank will update their portfolio, give cash or margin balances, or handle their transaction orders.

Each month every investor receives his or her own statement and summary of their investment activity for the month. It details acquistions, sales, profits and losses, as well as ranking each student among his peers in Virginia and across the nation.

The students, and the sponsoring companies, take the challenge seriously. Each student has his own password to ensure the security of his account, and last year, all transactions were recorded on tape as a further precaution against fraud.

For high school students, the In