Bryan Sims is a typical 17-year-old. The Crescent Valley High School junior plays football, goes snowboarding on the weekends and holds down a part-time job to put gas in the family car his parents let him drive.

Oh, and there's on more things- he likes to swap hot stock tips with his buddies.

Bryan is a budding market wizard who started investing with his own money last year.

"I was interested in securing my financial future," he said. "At 16 you're thinking about college…you want a car."

Using his father's E-Trade account, Bryan put some money in a couple of likely prospects. So far, so good.

"I'm doing all right," he said. "Let's say so far I haven't sold anything at a loss."

But Bryan didn't stop there. He's also a budding entrepreneur who has set up his own company to help other teens learn how to invest.

In a venture that grew out of a project for Craig Ellingson's sophomore business management class, Bryan launched StartSmart Investment Clubs in January. The idea proved so popular that now there are two clubs at Crescent Valley, one for sophomores and one for juniors; with a total membership of about 40 students.

"Basically, we provide a curriculum to teach teen-agers about investing," Bryan said. "From there, they research the companies on their own and do their own investing."

He's been getting some help from a couple of financial consultants from the local office of Salomon Smith Barney, Tim Gallagher and Susie Cook. Gallagher was at Crescent Valley for a Careers Day event when Bryan presented his business plan for StartSmart and was impressed with what he heard.

"I walked out of there, and I thought, ‘I want to talk to this guy some more,'" Gallagher said.

Gallagher encourage Bryan to pursue his idea for a company, and Cook came on board, too.

"Time and I are volunteering our own time and our own research," Cook said. The clubs are investing through a Smith Barney account, and the firm is giving them discounted trading fees.

Both clubs are affiliated with the National Association of Investors Corp. NAIC provides educational material that helps the students understand the mechanics of the stock market and teaches them a set of investment principles. NAIC also provides software for analyzing stocks the students might want to buy, plus an accounting program that tracks the members' investments.

To join, students pay a $25 fee that goes to Start Smart to cover operating expenses and NAIC's fees. Bryan's not drawing a paycheck at this point, he said, although if his company continues to grow he could eventually get a salary. Students also put $200 into the club's investment kitty to start out with, plus another $30 a month after that.

The clubs work rather like mutual funds. Members pool their resources to buy stocks in various companies, and they get shares in the club's total holdings based on how much they invest. They can cash out their shares at any time.

But unlike mutual funds, the club's investment decisions are made by the members, not by a professional fund manager.

"They're making the decisions to invest," Bryan said. "It's not just one person doing it."

After some preliminary meetings, the two clubs made their first investment decisions Thursday night. The scene looked more like a corporate shareholders meeting than a teenage gathering.

In a feat that rivals his business start-up, Bryan arranged to reserve the third-floor banquet room at OSU's Valley Football Center and rounded up pizza from Izzy's and Papa John's, sandwiches from Quizno's, fruits and veggies from Safeway, and a couple of "Congratulations" sheet cakes from WinCo- all for free.

More than two dozen club members showed up for the meeting along with about the same number of parents. Also in attendance were Gallagher and Cook from Smith Barney; Ellingson, the Crescent Valley business teacher; and Patricia Mulder, executive director of the Corvallis Area Chamber of Commerce. But this was the kids' show from start to finish.

Dressed like a junior executive in crisp shirt, slacks and tie, Bryan ran the meeting with the poise of a boardroom veteran. He got things rolling with a story that illustrates just how badly some of these student stock pickers have been bitten by the investing bug. On a recent snowboarding excursion, Bryan said, two of his friends actually got into a shoving match on the chairlift over who had more market savvy.

"If I can get people to get into fights about investing, then I know I'm doing something," Bryan said.

After that, it was right to business. By ones and twos, club members came to the lectern to present the results of their investment research.

It was clear that some were still struggling to master the basics of analyzing corporate financial information, but many of the students displayed an amazing level of sophistication. At the tender age of 15, 16 or 17, some of these kids were just as comfortable discussing earnings per share, cash-to-debt ratios and gross profit margins as they might been talking about their favorite video games.

Listen to Tom Loika, Start Smart's 17-year-old vice president, tick off his reasons for recommending the club buy shares in Microsoft:

‘They don't owe anybody any money, they have a product everybody knows, they don't have many major competitors, and their profits are going up every day."

The presentations were followed by intense caucusing on the part of both investment clubs. Then the students voted on which stocks to invest in.

When the dust finally settled, the juniors decided to put $1,000 each in Nokia, Immunex and Colgate-Palmolive, plus $600 in Microsoft and $300 in Cicso Systems. The sophomores invested $1,000 in Nokia, the same amount in Immunex, $650 in Cisco and $500 in Colgate. Both clubs were left with several hundred dollars in the pot to invest next month.

But with the financial markets taking a beating, is this really a good time to get into stocks?

All the club members are aware of the risks, Bryan insisted, and that in itself has educational value.

"The way we look at it is it's better to lose $200 now than 10 or 15 thousand later on," he said. "It's an investment, just like anything else."

And what do the parents of these budding tycoons think of the undertaking?

"It seems like a pretty good idea to me," said Ron Reher, whose 16-year-old son, Aaron, sank some money in stocks Thursday night. "I wish this had been around when I was a kid. Maybe I wouldn't have to be here now."

Sandy Bell agreed. "it really makes them aware of what's going on," she said.

Bell has a 15-year-old boy, Andrew in the club. She and her husband are so sold on the idea that they decided to match his contribution.

"Of course," she added with a laugh, "we expect half the profits, too."

As to the future of Bryan's company, the Smith Barney consultants are convinced he's on the right track.

"In a year or two, they'll have a waiting list for this thing," Gallagher said.

Cook agreed… "I think it's a wonderful business idea," she said.

In fact, she added, Smith Barney is considering a business arrangement with Start Smart to launch other teen investment clubs around the state. And if anybody can make the idea work, she said, it's Bryan Sims.