Playing the Stock Market game
I recently came across an interesting website that allows me to play the market using fake money. The site is a cross between Facebook and the Stock Exchange. Wondering what site it is? It is called My Wall St dot net.
I will be using this site (and my portfolio) to test out some of the amazing stock deal offers I get in my email.
- Review of Oct 4,2007 trading
- Purchase 1,000 shares of LUM for $2.59 each
- Purchase 500 shares of YHOO for $27.24 each
- Purchase 10,000 shares of EGCP for $0.59 each
- Purchase 10,000 shares of LUM for $2.68 each
- Sell 1,000 shares of LUM for $2.68 each (profit = (($2.68×1,000)-($2.59×1,000)-$20 comission) = $70)
- Buy 92 shares of GOOG for $580.00 each
- Sell 92 shares of GOOG at $577.63 each (loss = (($580.00×92)-($577.63×92)+$20 comission) = $238.04)
- Buy 112 shares of LUM for $2.83 each
- Buy 10,000 shares of LUM for $2.82 each
Where I stand now
My original $100K equity is now worth $101,699.99 and I have $24,903.55 cash on hand. My daily return is 1.7% and I gained $1,699.00. That is more than I make in a week!
According to the leader board I am ranked 46 in the daily standing, 91 in the weekly standing and 196 in the monthly standing. Not too bad for my first day.
Caution
There are a few bad points about playing the stock market game on this site. The most notable one is the enforced 20 minute delay on trades going through and the one hour hold time on stocks. There is also no way to cancel a trade once you put it in the system.
If I put in an order to buy Apple stock because I see it at $145 per share and it suddenly jumps to $150 a share during that 20 minute delay I end up buying it at $150 a share. I then have to hold it for an hour before getting rid of it.
They say that this is to keep people who have up to the minute data from abusing the system but it still annoys me. When I was trying out the system I put in a couple of bad orders on accident and had to wait an hour and twenty minutes to undo them.
So why am I doing it? Because they offer a $1,000 weekly cash prize to the top rookie on the system!