Recommended Stock Market Simulator Games

By Rekhit Pachanekar

Let’s say you have gone through a gargantuan amount of resources on financial markets and have created a trading strategy which you are really confident about. However, when you go online and think about opening a trading account, there is a lingering doubt if the strategy can really work. This is exactly the reason why stock market simulators were created.

In the initial years of the market, traders used to write down the value of their hypothetical investments on paper and then followed the market movements to check its profitability. Thus, this method was called paper trading.

Now, stock market simulators give you real-time information of the stocks and provide you virtual money to make trades, according to the rules of the stock market. This helps you gauge the performance of your strategy with no risk involved.

It is always a good practice to test your strategies before putting down real money in the market. Thanks to technology, we have access to real-time market data which can be used to create a strategy as close to the real world as possible.

We will list out a few popular stock market simulators below. You can select the simulator based on your preferences or services provided. Do note that these simulators are good for manual trading. Once you find a stock which is aligned with your trading strategy, you can use these stock market simulators to test your strategy's effectiveness.

Wall Street Survivor

Wall Street Survivor has been around for a decade now and they have kept it pretty simple. The trading game gives you $100000 as virtual cash with which you can buy or sell stocks. It also takes into account the brokerage charges to mirror the real world as close as possible. It also has different leagues in which you can participate and the winner gets a real-world cash prize for the top performers.

Stock exchanges supported: NYSE

Investopedia Stock Simulator

While Investopedia is already a credible resource for financial news, it has also created a stock simulator which contains real-time information on stocks in the U.S. market. Apart from stocks, it gives you a choice to invest in options too. With a user base of around 700,000, the trading game is a good place to check where you stand with respect to the competition.

Stock exchanges supported: NYSE

Investfly

Investfly is not for the faint-hearted. While its UI is not as simple as the other stock simulators, the trading game has a ton of features which can be really helpful for practising algorithmic trading. You have a choice to either buy a stock manually or automate your trade. The interesting thing here is that you can use your own strategy or import one of the few available strategies provided by Investfly. The caveat here is if you want to create your own strategy, you will have to upgrade your membership for a small sum ($19 to $49 per month).

Once you are confident about your strategy, Investfly gives you an option to connect to a broker and start live trading.

Stock exchanges supported: NYSE, NASDAQ, TMX, HKE, NSE, BSE, LSE, EPA:ENX

Stock Trainer

Stock Trainer is an android app where the user can use their Google+ or Facebook account to log in and start virtual trading in minutes. The trading game’s interface is simple to use with the user searching for a stock and adding it to their portfolio. In the stock details, you can see the historical stock price as a chart to make a better decision.

The advantage of the stock simulator is that it supports 13 countries as well as 20 different exchanges.

With a registered user base of 3100000, there is plenty of competition for a user to prove their mettle.

Stock exchanges supported: NYSE, NASDAQ, BSE, NSE, JPY among others

Moneybhai

Moneycontrol is one of the top financial resources for the Indian market. In their ongoing vision to educate the novices in the financial markets, they created MoneyBhai, a virtual trading game which provides the investors with INR 1 crore to invest in the Indian markets.

The rules for the stock simulator are simple enough and we will list them down below.

The user is provided with 1 crore in their portfolio and the intra-day trading limit is the same
The buy and sell transactions have to follow the markets and the volume cannot be greater than the actual market
The brokerage charged depends on the type of trade executed
If at any point, the user feels like they want to start over, the portfolio can be reset and the user will receive 1 crore INR again

Stock exchanges supported: BSE, NSE.

DSIJ Stock Market Challenge

Dalal Street Investment journal and Bombay Stock Exchange have created a simple trading game for enthusiasts among us to try out and perfect their strategy. Apart from the INR 10,000,000 (1 crore) virtual cash provided to build your portfolio, this stock simulator also provides a chatroom where the players can discuss various strategies as well as which stocks are worthy to buy or sell.

The community is very active, thanks to the regular contests being run by the website to award the top performers.

This stock simulator can also be customised depending on the type of player you are, for example, a student, institute or corporate.

To help you make the right choices, DSIJ has also provided a few other features such as:

A daily digest of the top news
Top performers
Latest stock prices
Stock watchlist

Stock exchanges supported: BSE, NSE.

Trader Trainer

Trader Trainer is not a real-time stock simulator like the others on this list. What sets apart this android app is that it presents a scenario by loading historical data of an anonymous stock and asks you to make a decision based on it. This decision is either ‘Long’ or ‘Short’.

You can use different technical indicators such as MACD, SMA or even Bollinger bands.

At a beginner level, you start off with $25,000 and your aim is to build a portfolio of stocks amounting to $100000.

Stock exchanges supported: Not applicable

Market Watch

Market Watch is another stock simulator which lets you trade virtual dollars and hone your strategies. In this game, you can choose your starting amount and there is a discussion forum available in case you want an opinion from different users.

Stock exchanges supported: AMEX, Nasdaq, NYSE, OTC-BB

Trading game

The aim of this stock market simulator is to inform the potential investors as well as provide a demo environment of the market for paper trading. Thus, when you register a demo account, you have to earn the practice money by going through the short and informative lectures on forex and stocks and then answer a few basic questions. In this manner they have integrated both, learn and practice modules in a cohesive manner.

The following instruments are provided by this simulator for demo trading:

22 most in-demand stocks
11 currencies
3 indexes
6 cryptocurrencies
7 highly traded commodities

Stock exchanges supported: NASDAQ, NYSE, Frankfurt Stock Exchange

Best Brokers

Best Brokers is a no-frills attached stock market simulator app which starts you off with 25k Euros and provides you with real-time data of roughly 50,000 stocks around the world.

In spite of its focus on virtual trading, it has a news section too which tells you what is happening in the financial world, in the app itself. With the option to add friends, you can also compete with them in the trading simulator itself. It also supports crypto-trading.

Stock exchanges supported: Frankfurt Stock Exchange, NYSE, NASDAQ,

Invstr

Invstr is mobile stock market simulator app which tries to simplify investing by providing the stocks in terms of their categories. This helps the user understand the correlation between different companies in the same category. It starts you off with 1 million USD but the unique thing about this app is that you can compete with other players in a league and the top players of the month receive real-world prizes at the end of the month.

The free version limits your order ratio to 10% of available funds, you can buy a premium plan to finetune your trading strategies.

Invstr has an option to link to brokers once you are confident of your trading strategy.

Stock exchanges supported: NYSE, NASDAQ, BSE, NSE, JPY among others

Chart Game

Chart Game is a stock market simulator which helps you learn how to read charts. You are given a chart and certain indicators which can be applied to get you a better insight into the stock details and then buy or sell, according to your analysis.

This is a good simulator which helps you sharpen your analytical skills and helps you understand when to exit the trade.

Stock exchanges supported: Not applicable

You can think about online simulators as a variation of game theory in trading, where our decisions do not affect the real world. While online simulators are a good start to practice your trading strategies, there can be certain factors which might be difficult to replicate in the game. For example, since the player is given a significant sum to start off, their risk tolerance, as well as objectives, might differ from the situation if it was their own hard earned money. Thus, it is always necessary to exercise caution when you move from paper trading to the real world.

There are a lot of tried and tested strategies which can be used on different financial instruments depending on a variety of factors. The algorithmic trading bundle is a collection of courses which helps you learn and practice these strategies.

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