OSU trading floor opens

Students at Oklahoma State University can now watch the stock market rise and fall, and get credit for it. OSU opened a trading floor for students Tuesday afternoon. KOTV's Emory Bryan was there

Wednesday, March 14th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Students at Oklahoma State University can now watch the stock market rise and fall, and get credit for it. OSU opened a trading floor for students Tuesday afternoon. KOTV's Emory Bryan was there and covered the opening ceremony.

It has the look of a place where lots of money changes hands, but at OSU, it's all just practice, the real thing comes after graduation. Oklahoma State's new trading floor cost half a million dollars, donated by the Houston based Dynergy company, headed by an Oklahoma State graduate, Chuck Watson. "You always get students that are bright and smart, and everybody wants that, but the ones that actually have translated what they learned in a classroom on a trading floor like this, they're much more valuable than they would be having never done that."

Business students can follow the market, using the same computers and information used on Wall Street. OSU finance student, James Worth says, "You can get all kinds of analysis, information, real time stock quotes, the information you need if you were going to be a stock trader." This floor will help students get realistic training on trading stocks, and will help the school recruit students, it's the only trading floor at any university in Oklahoma.

OSU Professor, Craig Parrigan. "It's very real, it's a scaled-down version of trading facilities in New York. The charts, the TV, the terminals are exactly what you would see in a real world trading room."

36 students at a time can train here, trading stocks, energy or agricultural products. They won't make any money doing it, but they can't lose any money here either.