Stock Markets Exposed
Hi. Can someone let me know where they have stock market stimulation games that mimic real stock trading.?
In essence, I can use fake money, but be as if I were trading in the stock market for real. I would like to learn to trade and there's no best teacher than actually doing...
Public Comments
- Investopedia.com
- First, when you talk about "learning to trade", I'm assuming you mean that you want to learn to assess the market to make your own decisions about buying/selling. There are really two main approaches to this. They are called fundamental analysis and technical analysis. The former analyzes the company, its peers, and other market conditions that effect the sector in which the company lies (more qualitative). The latter looks at historical prices, volume of trades, etc. (more quantitative). While the first isn't necessarily hard, it does require a bit more leg work while the second requires you have a good spreadsheet program capable of making pretty graphs so you can visually analyze what the data is telling you. I would suggest browsing through your local Borders/B&N for both of these approaches. There are typically 2 or 3 shelves-worth dedicated to these topics. Spend a few hours browsing and find an author who's style of explanation you can seem to easily grasp. That said, I don't know of any simulation game. However, some of the higher end commercial stock model software you can buy will run scenario simulations. However, if your goal is to learn to understand the stock market via either approach, software may not be your best friend just yet. While software is great for doing those redundant tasks, in this case, it can hurt. If you really want to know how to invest based upon how the market works, then software may hide those little details that you need to learn to watch and understand. Sure, later you can use the software, when you know what it is doing and why. Because you'll understand the principle of what's happening beneath the surface. Write up a list of 10 stocks in which you think you would like to invest. Write them down on paper or in a spreadsheet. Keep notes on why you chose each - what you think is good and bad about it. Denote the amount of shares you would have bought had you done so for real. Then, watch it and record things like closing costs, volume, etc. Any thoughts or ideas you have. When you sell, again write down why. Examine the performance and gain an understanding of what you think would happen versus what did. Keep a score card of a few stocks for a few months. Get fancy, make your own moving averages (10-day, 30-day, whatever) and think about what they are telling you and why there are differences between the different averages. Get an understanding of what these indicators tell you. If you devise a model of your own, test it against historical data. You can typically download historical prices for almost any stock/index (esp the Dow and S&P). So, you get 2005 data, plug it in, make a prediction for 2006 and 2007 and then compare. Hmm, didn't do so well? Why? Didn't expect the housing market crash did ya? No approach can cover every detail... you'd go crazy. Decide what's important for you to focus on and does "well enough" "most of the time". You'll find that there is no one silver bullet for investing. Depending on whether you want to be a day trader or just adjust the portfolio on a yearly basis, you'll use very different indicators of when you should make a move. For now, good ol' pen and paper might be your best option.
- One thing you can do is enroll in Etrade and set up as many test portfolio's as you want and pick stocks and then watch their performance and make adjustments as you wish. That way you learn how to work the various features of the site. I personally maintain several in addition to my actual portfolio's just to follow various sectors of interest.
- http://caps.fool.com It's really an investing game, not a trading game.
- The best game I have seen is at www.marketocracy.com. The top 100 per quarter win money if they are selected. The rules are you have to manage the portfolio like a real mutual fund. It isn't the highest returns that win, but rather the top 100 consistent returns. So if you win with one stock that takes you up 700%, you cannot win the game, but if you consistently make money doing things that make sense, people looking at it would say it isn't luck, then you win. They also run a mutual fund mofqx.
