stock picks of a 9 year old

I was in a class in 3rd grade and had the opportunity to do all sorts of "enrichment" activities like brainteasers, or inventing, and at one point we got the Wall Street Journal and we all got to do a stock picking game.

I am sure the teacher was attempting to teach me the time value of money or the amazing properties of compounding interest, but the highlight was a fantasy stock game and I picked three stocks: Kroger, KMart, and UpJohn.

We all started with 10k so I figured I would double check what might have happened.

Turns out that 3333.33 in Kroger invested from 1985 to now and disregardin dividends would be worth--- approximately 20k, not bad.

KMart declared bankruptcy fairly recently, so that 3333.33 is worth 0.00 but let's hope I would have figured out the company was struggling and sold it in the 90's.

UpJohn is the startler. UpJohn was purchased by Phamacia and Phamacia became Pfizer and Pfizer makes billion trillion dollars, so it's safe to guess that the 3333.33 would be worth more today than I would have expected.

So the moral of this story? My oldest son will be nine next year, I intend to ask him for his stock picks immediately.