A Brighter Future With the Bulls and Bears

It was the kind of stuff teen-agers normally don’t worry about. Instead of fretting about banda music or the proper way to wear a baseball cap, the kids I ran into at the Pacific Stock Exchange the other day were concerned about the value of CBS stock. “It’s falling,” Maria Torres complained.

Alma Ortiz talked up Texas Instruments. “A very good investment,” the 15-year-old opined. “No, Hilton is better,” another argued.

Still another said: “Go with the tried and true. IBM.”

It was the last thing I would have expected from high school kids, whom you think of as routinely throwing aside the business section before reading a newspaper. But they proved that inner-city kids can excel, if given the chance.

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I hit a nerve with some readers when I complained a while back that many youngsters in minority-area schools are not encouraged to consider college. Too often, they are steered into menial jobs when they are capable of more. I recounted my own experience of having an elementary school teacher tell me I should be an auto mechanic.

“You people are good at that sort of thing,” was his explanation for the advice.

The calls and letters soon flooded in, asking what I had against auto mechanics.

Nothing. We need mechanics. I just don’t think every kid in East L.A., or anywhere else, for that matter, should be encouraged to be one. There are other professions to think about.

So naturally, I was excited when I learned of a summer program aimed at encouraging high school kids from South-Central, the Eastside and the San Gabriel Valley to consider careers in business, investment or finance. For the past three summers, as many as 75 students have gone into a program operated by Academy of Business Leadership, a nonprofit organization.

The program is the brainchild of Rick Yamamoto, a manager of investments for Southern California Edison Co., who believes more women and minorities should get into his line of work. “It’s dominated by white males,” he says.

For the kids, the program is an introduction to a whole new world. They study the stock market, business essentials such as marketing, cash flow and customer services, and the concepts of business ethics and time management.

They compete against each other by making make-believe stock investments and presenting a plan for starting a new business.

In the process, they learn about themselves. Some of them, whose grades have been poor in the past, now think about college. Alma Ortiz, an incoming junior at Garfield High School in East L.A., is so motivated by the classes that she gets up extra early to ride two buses to be in her seat when the 8 a.m. sessions begin at USC. “This is different for me,” she says, “because I’m always late to school. And I live two blocks from Garfield.”

The kids’ interest in capitalism was evident during the visit to the Pacific Stock Exchange.

I don’t know the stock market world of bears and bulls, but I was soon instructed. “Bears think the price of stock will go down,” explained Rashon McNair, an 11th-grader at Dorsey High in South-Central. “Bulls think the prices will go up.”

She dismissingly told me, “I thought everybody knew that.”

They asked questions about commissions paid for a stock transaction, what kind of education and training are needed to be a broker, and why over-the-counter stocks are not traded on the Pacific exchange.

The kids eventually made a startling discovery. “Hey, why are there so few women down there on the floor of the exchange?” one girl asked. “I see one black guy down there, but why aren’t there more?” another asked.

They nodded silently when the tour guide explained that few have tried to find work and even fewer have succeeded.

“That’s why you’re here,” Katharyn Muniz, the program’s executive director, murmured.

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I came away encouraged after meeting with the budding entrepreneurs and captains of stock, especially when I half-jokingly asked whether I should invest in Mexican food products and restaurants.

Last week’s bad news that a meal featuring chile rellenos exceeds the federal government’s recommended daily limit of saturated fat and sodium prompted some of them to say, “Don’t jump into a bad situation by investing in unhealthy food.”

Two others thought PepsiCo--the parent company of Taco Bell--was a good buy.

They caught me off guard when they said that if I was interested, they’d get back to me after they looked into it more.

Sure thing.