A new finance, business and investment-focused club, the Solon Investment Society, spearheaded by co-founders Jacob Khaykin, Avery Andrews and Athulith Kanteti, started off the 2025-2026 school year with over 60 members.

Before the Solon Investment Society was created, each of the officers had proposed separate, yet similar, ideas for a club that focused on different aspects of the financial world. When asked to synthesize into a singular, multifaceted club that encompasses many different business and finance aspects, these students became presidents of the respective fields they had originally proposed and were most knowledgeable and passionate about. Jacob Khaykin, President of AI Applications, blends AI with prominent current events. He said he finds it particularly interesting how AI is transcending into the financial investment world.

“I made an AI [application] that can predict stock prices through historical data and other variables that affect cost,” Khaykin said. “[The AI is] called Quaddle.

“It stands for quant model. Essentially, it uses seven years of historical data of a stock and is basically a chat bot where you can say something like ‘predict the price of Apple,’ and the AI automatically goes through what’s called an API, which basically connects the code to a sort of data endpoint. It then uses that to fetch stock prices over seven years at a certain specific time.”

According to Khaykin, the education and interactive simulation approach of the club–researching and tracking hypothetical investment portfolios– is a unique design aimed to best equip members to dive into the world of investing and finance on their own.

“It’s not just students teaching other students, but rather guest speakers coming in with actual experience and actual internships in the field that also went through college and schooling that can accurately talk about those things,” Khaykin said. “Also, it’s not just how to invest, but also why to invest.”

Besides providing finance-based education via informed and experienced speakers, the club emphasizes a hands-on approach to preparing students for investment underwriting. The interactive method is a procedure the Solon Investment Society claims to “lead to financial freedom for all.” President of Investments, Avery Andrews, said a huge component of the club is hands-on experiences, such as the Wharton Investment Competition.

“Wharton [Global High School Investment Competition sponsored by the Wharton business school of the University of Pennsylvania] is a global high school investment competition across the world,” Andrews said. “Every team across the world has a virtual portfolio that the team shares. They try to make the best decisions for that portfolio as best they can by investing in bonds, stocks and ETFs. You have to present a case study about one specific stock that you researched and invested in, and you have to explain why you invested in it.”

The co-presidents each said they hope to gain a lot from this experience.

“I am personally interested in finance myself, so I think it’ll help me to also learn from everyone in the club,” Andrews said.

Khaykin said this collaborative knowledge sharing process in making investment decisions is a structure that the club is built around.

“As officers, we might know some, but we don’t know much compared to the guest speakers we bring or even other people in the club,” Khaykin said. “We’re just there to get everything on task and really even listen to other members. I think listening is the most important part. Listening to how other members divide strategy towards investing, for example, [is what I find to be] the key takeaway.”

Though the club boasts many experienced members, it is in no way limiting membership on the basis of skill. In fact, the club and Avery Andrews welcome novices to learn with the club.

“We actually took a poll, and the majority of our members right now have very little to no experience,” Andrews said. “So right now, we’re molding our lessons to appeal to a newer audience. Essentially, starting from the very base of investing, like stocks and index funds. In the next meeting, we’ll probably go a little bit deeper, but we’re really just going to start with the beginning.”

So far, Khaykin said their meeting engagement has been steadily increasing.

“We originally had about 220 sign-ups. Part of that was facilitated and accelerated by our candy,” Khaykin said. “[As for meetings, we’ve had] a pre-meeting before the club fair filled up the whole classroom at around 25 people.”

With group-centered activities, some members join with the hope of gaining more than financial education, they hope to also gain a community. This incentive is what ultimately led junior Mayank Juttiga to join the club.

“I think that investment is a good opportunity to make money in the future, but I was also particularly interested to participate because a lot of my friends joined [ Solon Investment Society],” Juttiga said.

Andrews urges those seeking financial prosperity to join them for a meeting.

“If you want to be rich in the future, build some wealth for yourself and learn lifelong skills, go to the lecture hall after school on Mondays,” Andrews said. “We’re happy to have you.”