Entering The Financial Stage: Hopewell Investment Club:
Both students and teachers at Hopewell Valley Central High School place a remarkable emphasis on extracurriculars, not just schoolwork. It offers a breadth of extracurriculars, ranging from athletics to STEM-related clubs to even an iceberg lettuce eating club. However, the newly-founded Hopewell Investment Club stands out as it has attracted dozens of students within such a short timespan of just several months.
Founded in the beginning of the 2025-26 school year, the Hopewell Investment Club is open to students from all grades who are willing to learn about managing finances, pursue a business-oriented career, or discover new interests. Vice President Sparsh Roy, President Amal Parikh, and Vice President Luke Poltrino collectively created this extracurricular to drive interest among young aspiring investors within campus.
For the purposes of this article, perspectives from all three founders and Marketing Manager Andrew Shah are included to detail more information about the extracurricular as well as potential prospects.
Origins:
In the beginning of the year, Parikh was the driving force for creating the investment club by proposing the idea. He believes that the investment club is “a good way to teach others to build your wealth.”
Several years before the investment club was founded, Roy attended school in Texas. There, he was an active member of the schoolwide investment club. When he moved to Hopewell, there was no investment club at the time of his freshman year, motivating him to bring this extracurricular from his former school to HVCHS this year.
Meanwhile, Poltrino’s motivation for starting the investment club is the potential impact in which “if you make smart investments, you will have a lot of money by the time you retire.”
Together, the three students founded the investment club, with a distinct purpose of investing money. Although business-oriented clubs such as FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) and DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) are present, they do not specialize in investing.
FBLA specializes in the broad range of business (economics, technology, and accounting) through presentations and academic exams, whereas DECA specializes in marketing and management through hands-on competitions, where collaboration is encouraged.
By establishing the investment club, the leaders instill the goals of learning “how to manage [individual] finances well and research stocks” in their bi-weekly meetings. Parikh, Roy, and Poltrino believe that managing finances and making smart investments, particularly in stocks, contributes to the financial well-being of individuals as investments play a role in decision-making.
About the Club:
Amassing about 40 members, the investment club has been growing fast as a high school extracurricular. This means that the club will bolster members’ college applications, while also teaching beneficial lifelong skills. Roy believes that people should join the investment club, because after graduating from high school, students will need financial literacy skills in order to make rational decisions that require critical thinking.
In addition, the extracurricular can make college applications stand out through competitions. Although this club meets bi-weekly, students have sufficient resources to prepare for competitions. Shah mentions that the club will “help out with layouts and criteria for stock pitches.”
This is essential for competitions as understanding what makes an effective stock pitch will increase the chances of winning awards. In addition, the investment club provides YIS (Young-Investor Society) courses that are available for every member, which serve as supplemental material.
Every month, each student presents their stock pitches, which are evaluated by the founders. The top three nominees, selected by the founders, are designated to present their stock pitches in local competitions. Then, the nominees work their way up to state competitions and eventually—the global Impact Investing Pitch Competition at Cornell University, an Ivy League institution.
Prospects:
Because the stakes are high for competitions for nominees, it is unsurprising that the rewards are crucial for college applications. If the nominees win the mock-competitions, then they will not only be able to enter local competitions, but they will also receive candy.
Winning the global competition at Cornell will grant the nominees a 5000 dollar scholarship and a potential financial internship. These benefits will make applicants appeal to admissions officers as winning this competition demonstrates a high level of financial literacy and skills. In addition, it increases one’s chances of getting admitted into a prestigious college that can expand financial education and further develop a business-oriented career.
But, regardless of the competition, Poltrino highlights that each competition serves as “accolades that can build up your college resume.”
Conclusion:
The Hopewell Valley Investment Club is catered to a diverse range of students, whether they are still figuring out what they want to major in or already know that they want to pursue a business-oriented career. Like many other extracurriculars, the Investment Club fosters critical thinking that is independent of academic intelligence, meaning that unusual levels of creativity are required to be eligible for scholarships.
Thus, joining the investment club will teach students not what to think, but how to think in the modern financial world, making it worthwhile for many interested students.
