Former Jamaica Stock Exchange chief launches consultancy and stock market game for kids

Launch of Street Forrest Business Consultancy and the school stock-market game

Marlene Street Forrest, who retired as managing director of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) in September 2025, launched Street Forrest Business Consultancy, with its first public project a stock-market game aimed at schoolchildren. Street Forrest made the announcement at a virtual launch on Wednesday, framed around "planting the seeds of an investment culture."

How the game works for students

Starting Thursday, October 15, students in grades four to six can buy and sell shares and manage virtual portfolios through the game. The platform is provided by Wizdom CRM and combines simulated trading, quizzes and artificial intelligence (AI) to teach investing and financial literacy. The dashboard has been localised so that students see the Jamaica Stock Exchange when they log in, with Jamaican securities receiving greater emphasis and global market securities also available for trading.

Three AI teammates, named Maven, Isabella and Mr Rabbit, interact with students via voice and text-to-speech, using examples involving candies, pizza and cookie jars to explain financial concepts. The program covers profit and loss, percentages, data interpretation, chart reading, dividends, risk management, and buying and selling securities.

Schools taking part and the wider rollout

Eight schools have registered for the initial rollout: St Teresa's Alpha Primary, Holy Childhood Prep, Avondale Prep, St Richard's, Half-Way Tree, Excelsior, St Benedict and Harbour View primary schools. Registration remains open to schools and individual students, with participating schools expected to devote 30 to 45 minutes a week to the game, potentially through a stock-market game club. Automated reports will let schools track student performance.

Prizes in the form of cash, certificates and other awards are planned for students, teachers and schools, with recognition tied to effort and participation in quizzes.

Rationale and capital-market context

Street Forrest tied the project to efforts to widen participation in Jamaica's capital market, arguing that starting early could reduce the repeated interventions needed to teach adults about investing. The Jamaica Central Securities Depository hosted 427,000 investor accounts up to late 2025, according to JSE data cited in the report, a figure Street Forrest's tenure helped grow from under 150,000 in 2015. On the surface, 427,000 equates to about 15 per cent of the population, but the article notes the share is lower because some individual investors hold multiple accounts.

Comments from the partners

Street Forrest said the aim is to move financial education earlier in life: "I've long believed that financial literacy should not begin when someone receives his first salary. It should begin in the classroom, when young minds are curious, receptive and developing the habits that will guide them through lives." She added that the game would require students to exercise "discipline, patience, research, judgment and appreciation of what risks are," and framed it as a way to help students appreciate "the difference between just being a consumer ... and becoming owners of productive assets."

Orlando Powell, chief executive of Wizdom CRM, said students will use the platform through quizzes and simulated trading, with the quizzes reinforcing knowledge of the local market and the trading letting students practise what they learn.