La Mesa Junior High School placed first and third in the Stock Market Game for the September–December 2011-2012 period, the school recently announced.

The first-place team members were Alejandro Hernandez, Ryan Valencia, Chris Rodriguez and Zulema Mejicano, who made a profit of 6.1781 percent. The third-place team made a profit of 3.7429 percent.

Geoffrey Aronsky is the school’s business education teacher at La Mesa, and has run the program there for nine years.

As part of the game, each team is given $100,000 in a brokerage account and must invest the simulated funds in various stocks and mutual funds. Students track their investments using math, English, science and social studies skills.

Students create research portfolios using graphs and spreadsheets and do research papers on their companies.

The students will be honored this month at a luncheon sponsored by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.