Which Great Stock Market Games are out there that you can play? It’s a fact that the popularity of trading is increasing worldwide, and South Africa is no exception. One of the most heavily traded markets across the world, the Forex market churn out trillions of dollars in trading volume each day. To learn more about forex trading in South Africa, you may visit https://www.tradeforexinsa.co.za/.
Before you start trading, you need to learn how to trade, who the best brokers in South Africa are, and how to choose the right broker. However, do you know how helpful trading games are?
The importance of hands-on learning is undeniable when it comes to trading. However, when it comes to investing your money in the stock market, making a beginner’s mistake can cost you more than just your self-esteem. Fortunately, it is easy to practice with virtual money on the web.
There are many online development games such as GNU Trade and Investopedia that you can play with virtual money, but some of them may not be easy for beginners.
Here are 5 free online Stock Market games to get you started
1. Wall Street Survivor
In this game, you can invest 100K USD in virtual cash through drop-down menu choices. A friendly cartoon version of stock guru Mark Brookshire assists the players to make their final decision by offering some rating numbers while they input a stock. These include a rating for survivor sentiment, technical, fundamentals, and a Motley Fool Rating.
For extra help in choosing stocks, the game offers an impressive resource library that ranges in beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. You may begin with Investing 101 and consider visiting the community forums if you have specific enquiries. Players who need a bit of help to get started may also choose to follow one of the preset portfolios created by pro traders.
Although the 100K USD competition is most popular on the site, yet anybody can create a contest. Prizes can vary, but most often consist of competitive pride.
2. Young Money Stock Market Game
The stock exchange game of Young Money magazine is easy to learn but very realistic which is a hard balance to strike. Realistic aspects of this game include virtual communication that is taken out of each trade, following market hours and rules about how you can invest. Unlike several other investing games, you can make trades at a real-time price in this game. Learning aspects include an intuitive tabbed interface and convenient help icons on key terms.
The site runs a monthly contest with a 100 USD real cash prize. It goes to the player who gains the highest percentage. Players are also able to create their own contests that other players can join.
3. How The Market Works
Owned by the same company as Wall Street Survivor, this game is ideal for investors who aspire to gain experience with a new type of portfolio. Aside from stocks and indexes, you can opt to experiment with Forex portfolios, mutual funds, penny stocks, and short selling.
Beginners can execute market order-based trades in a ‘fun mode’ without worrying about things like set hours, order expiration, the maximum number of trades per day and per stock. A ‘realistic mode’ is the next level of complexity after the players have mastered the beginner level.
This game allows players to manage up to three forex portfolios and three stock portfolios at once on the site. For each portfolio, you can select a starting value from $100 to $500,000 and set how much virtual commission you are charged per trade.
The competition aspect is optional. General monthly contests offer $25,000 to each player as a virtual starting point. Other public contests include challenging restrictions such as ‘penny stocks only’ or ‘short sells only’. Users may also create their own password-protected games, which is a feature considered helpful by teachers in order to create class competitions.
4. Up Down Stock Market Game
Similar to Young Money’s game, UpDown has useful icons that explain important terms for beginners. More comprehensive resources in the education centre cover even the most basic investing concepts.
The game also offers community features that are helpful for beginners, such as the opportunity of collaborating with a group and seeing the most-bought and most-sold stocks. The ‘watch list’ tool offers a convenient dashboard to monitor potential picks.
UpDown sponsors a monthly contest. It rewards those players who beat the market with real cash.
5. Market Watch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game
MarketWatch is going to run the mock stock market contest for four weeks and it will award the winner of each week with an iPad. The contest is on week three currently. However, there is still time to get in on the competition for week four. Players must have their selections picked before the week begins on Monday. The shares selected by them are ‘purchased’ at Monday’s open and they will ‘sell’ at Friday’s close automatically.
The catch of this game is that all players can use only the 15 to 20 symbols selected for every week. The companies are selected by the game owner for companies projecting their earnings during the week. Lining up picks is easy. You simply need to drag the logo of the company to your trading card. After that, you have to designate if you want to go long or sell short.
Although there are many pro players playing this game, it is especially manageable for beginners because of the limited stock trading options per week.
Final Thoughts
Apart from reading and researching trading, playing these stock market games will definitely increase your knowledge about stock trading. With practical experience with virtual money, your decision-making skills will also improve which will help you in real-time trading. The best part is that the games are free, so, you will not have to pay with real money. It is a lot like practising trading on a demo account.
Watch this space for updates in the Gaming category on Running Wolf’s Rant.
Explore the site, check out our Featured Posts or scroll down to see the articles that are related to this article below. We've been around since 2008, so there's plenty of content.
If you're in South Africa and looking for something to do, check out The SA Gig Guide (on our sister site SA Music Zone).
If getting more knowledge is part of your DNA - Check out the latest posts on Interesting Facts.