MarketWatch is a website which offers a virtual stock exchange game where you can learn how to trade in stock market. MarketWatch is a financial website which is connected to various stock exchanges and uses real stock market data for playing. The website is actually published by Dow Jones which would be your go to site for any stock market related updates. So you wouldn’t find a better way to learn or test out your trading skills then playing this virtual stock exchange game.
The MarketWatch website has a section dedicated to this game called the Virtual Stock Exchange, the link for this game is given at the end of this article. When you open up this link you will see a page like the one show in the screenshot below.
Now before you can start trading in stocks, you are required to create an account on the website. You can sign in using your Facebook account, Google account, or you can use any other email account to sign in. Once you do that you will land on your game dashboard which will look like the screenshot below.
If you are instructor or a professor looking to play this game with your class or students then you can refer to the educational resources given towards the left side of the page. These include a instructor guide, sample course materials, and sample classroom handouts. Towards the center of the screen you will see two tabs “find a game” and “create a game”. If you want to join a already existing game, then you can go through the listed games on this page. If you know the name of the game that you want to join then you can simply type that out in the search box at the top.
Once you are on a game screen, you will see a green button saying join game, as can be seen in the above screenshot. You can not participate in a game without joining in. So go ahead and press the join button. You can also participate in the game discussions on the left side after you join in. The game info displayed on this page can be seen where you will see the name of the game, the name of the person who created this game, start date, number of days this game will end in, number of players in this game, etc.
You can also search for a game based on other criteria like game with most players, game with least players, start date, game with less end days remaining, etc. This section can be found right below the find or search section. The games listed can be public or private games, as marked by the creators. Public games can be joined immediately, whereas private games depend on the admin of the group allowing you to join.
Once you join in a game you will see a overview screen. This screen will show you your net worth, your buying power, your gains, your portfolio allocations, etc. On the left side of the screen you can see that now you can participate in the group discussions as well. Below your profile you can see the info about this particular game and leaderboards of this game.
Right now you have no holdings in your portfolio. To start trading you need to go to the top of the screen and search for a stock that you want to buy. For example, I searched for Apple and the below screenshot shows the suggestions which the website gave.
From the suggestions, select the one you are looking for and click on the trade blue button at the end. This will bring up the trade order window, as seen in the screenshot below.
On this screen you can choose the number of shares you want to buy by moving the slider given at the top of the window. Select price type, term, etc. and submit order to process it. After you buy the stocks of your choice, they will reflect in your portfolio. Depending on the gain and loss in your overall portfolio, you will be ranked on the leaderboards. As you can see my rank is 3 in the below screenshot with the days trading data.
You can join multiple games on this virtual stock exchange and trade stocks. You can learn a lot about the stock market using this website. You can also have meaningful discussions with other users of the game.
Conclusion:
Virtual Stock Exchange is a awesome game app if you are enthusiastic about learning how to trade in the stock market. The website offers you virtual money which you can use to buy sell stock. You will get to learn a lot about the ins and outs of the market by playing this game. If you want to venture in the stock market field then this might be the right place to get some learning and experience.
Check out Virtual Stock Exchange game website here.
