This post contains 5 best free online stock simulators for students. Using these, you can learn the basics of trading by actually trading in live stock prices. The only difference here is that instead of using real money, you spend virtual cash that these websites provide you.
All you have to do is create a free account and then get started. Some of these websites are part of stock broker services and when you think you are experienced enough to step into real trading then you can convert your virtual account to a real one and then use actual money for trading, and earn profits.
Apart from investing in virtual stocks, they have learning resources as well. If you are a high school student and have an interest in trading, then you can select any one of these. Along with stock trading, you will learn the important key terms and glossary that are usually used in day-to-day trading.
5 Free Online Stock Simulator for Students
Investopedia
Investopedia provides a free stock marketing simulator that you can use as a student. You can sign up using your email address only and then buy/sell stocks using the virtual money that it offers. Initially, it offers you 100000 dollars and you can use them for trade. You can buy stocks with that money and sell those stocks when their price goes up or starts to inflate.
As a student, this website will help you grasp the basics of stock trading. This website has a lot of learning resources that you can go through. Those learning resources will help you understand general terms and acronyms used in trading such as ROE, debt profit ratio, price earning ration, market cap, EPS, EBITDA, net margin, gross margin, and many more.
The stock trading you do on this website happens virtually. It lets you buy stocks of top companies such as Tesla and Apple. And then the process is the same as real trading. You select a stock, specify the quantity of shares you want to buy, and select the order type. When your order is placed, it will be executed when the market opens.
When your orders have been executed successfully, you will start seeing the stocks you have bought on your portfolio. It even gives you a dashboard from where you can track overall gain and loss on the stocks that you have purchased. There is a graphical representation of the stock prices as well that you can use to analyze the historical stock price data of any company.
HowTheMarketWorks
HowTheMarketWorks offers a very nice and simple virtual stock simulator for you to use. Here you can use this website as a student and as a beginner who wants to invest his/her money in stocks. If you want to get familiar with how the market works, then this simulator will help you. It has a simple interface where you can track the stocks of a company, create portfolio after buying the stocks using the virtual money it offers.
It has its own set of resources for students and beginners. Go to the teacher resources section and see the different lesson plans. There is a glossary section where you can learn about the trading and marketing terms and concepts. Here while signing up, you can choose how much virtual cash you need and then use the cash to buy stocks (virtually of course) in reputed companies like Netflix, Apple, Tesla.
Start by creating a free account and then start looking for the stocks that you can buy. Before buying stocks virtually, I will suggest you go through the company profile. Analyze the profits a company is making, its margins, and its yearly growth. It shows the company status in a graphical manner as well.
Wall Street Survivor
Wall Street Survivor is yet another website that offers you a free stock trading simulator. It lets you virtually trade in equity and options. You get $100,000 initially as virtual cash that you can spend in buying shares of any company. It creates a portfolio for you automatically where it will show all the stocks that you have bought. And besides training, it offers you tons of learning resources that will help you as a student to understand the basics of trading.
There is no need to use your email to sign up, as you can just choose any username-password to use the simulator. Research a company by tracking its performance over the years and then invest your money in it. You can analyze the profit margins and other things for any company in graphical form and then buy its shares. To do that, all you need to specify is its ticker name, quantity, and trade type.
IQ Options
IQ Options is another virtual trading platform that lets you trade in options instead of stocks. It gives you 10,000 dollars as virtual money that you can spend for trading. It shows you expected profit and total investment in real time and gives you a very intuitive interface from where you can quickly buy or sell an option. Think of this simulator as a game, as it has a leader board from where you can track the status of different users.
For beginners and students, this website offers video tutorials about the different topics on Options and trade in general. The real-time graph that it shows interactively displays the price drops and gains, and you can instantly invest your money in any company. Besides all this, if you wish to get out the simulator and use the real money, then you can do that as well.
To step into real trading, here you will have an option to switch to real trading after verifying your information and bank details. This is a good option as after learning how to invest and manage your money in the world of trading, you can take your skills to the next level by actually earning profits.
MoneyBhai by Moneycontrol
MoneyBhai by Moneycontrol is a virtual trading platform that can be used to learn and master stock trading. Even though this trading platform is targeted towards Indians, but since trading process is same everywhere, it can be a good option to start learning about how to trade in stocks, mutual funds, and bonds. Here it offers you a stock ticker which you can use to track the status of current stock prices.
Just like the websites above, here you will get learning resources and guides. The parent website, Moneycontrol can be used to do research about a specific company and its trading history. For any company, you can see all the essential details about it such as ROE, historical stock prices, debt-profile ratio, market cap, and much more.
You can sign up using just your email address here and then start investing the stocks virtually. It gives you 10,000,000 rupees in cash which is roughly equal to 127028 dollars. You can search for stocks of a specific company and then buy them using the virtual cash it has allotted you. You can place your order as GTD and GTC and track status from the order book
As your order gets executed, the shares you have bought will start appearing in the portfolio. You will get a simple dashboard as well from where you can track the total gain and loss on all the stocks that are in your portfolio. Besides all this, there is a leaderboard as well and you can see users who are tending because of the choice of their stocks. You can learn from others as well and that too for free.
Closing thoughts:
If you are a student and want to step into the world of trading, then it will be the best idea to start with virtual trading platforms. First learn the basics of trading, brokerage, and other things before stepping in to the real stock exchange. Especially, if you are not from finance background (academically), I will highly advise you to learn the resources on these virtual trading platforms.
