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stock market game for students

The #1 FREE
Stock Market Game

  • Free stock game for your school or club!
  • Real market data, build-in lessons, teacher reports, and more!
  • Used by over 10,000 teachers and 475,000 students every year!
Register for Free Register for Free
Create a Contest Teachers – Get Started Here!
 

Create Your Own Free Stock Market
Game For Your Classroom

Create a private stock market game for your students in minutes. Choose contest dates, starting cash, commissions, and custom trading rules. Whether you’re teaching economics, business, or personal finance, our stock market simulator game lets students learn by making investment decisions using live market prices.

Teachers can create one or multiple stock market games each semester, making it easy to reuse the platform across different classes and grade levels.

  • Free forever
  • Ready in under 10 minutes
  • Built-in investing lessons
  • Real-time stock market
  • Teacher dashboards
REGISTER & CREATE CONTEST
TEACHING FINANCIAL LITERACY? SEE OUR FINANCIAL LITERACY GAME SITE
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Featured on
  • PBS
  • BBC
  • Mashable
  • Investopedia
  • NCSS
  • JumpStart
  • Ramsey
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What is
HowTheMarketWorks?

We offer a free stock market game featuring real-time stock prices and rankings that allows users to learn about the stock markets and practice investing in stocks, ETFs, bonds, and mutual funds.

Register and immediately receive $100,000 in virtual cash and get access to all the helpful lessons and videos in our Education Center. All users can create their own custom contests and challenge their friends, family or co-workers.

Learn more

Teachers, Professors & Investment Clubs

Here are some useful resources to help you get started on setting up your class or contest.

COLLEGE PROFESSORS:  Learn more about our college stock market game.

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Teacher Starter Guide
Teacher Starter Guide
Teacher Tutorial Videos
Teacher Tutorial Videos
How to Create Your Class
How to Create Your Class
Using our Integrated Lessons
Using our Integrated Lessons
Lesson Plans by Class Subject
Lesson Plans by Class Subject
Discover our College Version
Discover our College Version
Available Teacher Reports
Available Teacher Reports
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ
Teacher Resources
More Teacher Resources
 
free stock game for schools

Why Teachers Choose Our Stock Market Game

Thousands of teachers choose our stock market game every year because it combines real investing with classroom-friendly tools.

Unlike many stock market games, teachers can:

  • Create unlimited classroom contests
  • Use real stock market prices
  • Track student performance
  • Assign built-in lessons
  • Generate teacher reports
  • Keep student data CSPA, FERPA and COPPA compliant
Join contest Create contest
 

The Stock-Trak Family

Make sure you set up your stock market contest in the right place!
We have different version of our platform depending on what type of contest you want to run.

 
FREE
Supported by advertising
Best for individuals learning on their own and investment clubs
  • Create your own custom contests
  • Trade US Stocks and Options
  • Basic Research Tools
  • 30 Built-in Investing Courses
  • Regular Contests with Prizes
  • Your free 100K practice portfolio
Learn more
 
FREE
Supported by advertising
Great for K12 classrooms
  • Create your own custom contests
  • Trade US Stocks and Mutual Funds
  • Basic Research Tools
  • 50 Built-in Investing & Personal Finance Lessons
  • National Contests every Semester with Prizes
  • Your free 100K practice portfolio
Create your account
 
$10/student
Discounted site licences available
Perfect for classrooms Grade 6 to 12
  • Create your own custom contests
  • Trade International Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds
  • 300 Built-in Investing, Personal Finance and more Lessons
  • National Contests every Semester with Prizes
  • Students can earn financial literacy certificates
  • Budgeting Game for Personal Finance Classes
  • Live Chat Support & Account Managers for Teachers
  • Advanced Reporting Tools for Teachers
  • Advanced Research Tools
Learn more
 
$25/student
Discounted site licences available
Perfect for universities & campus wide financial literacy challenges
  • Create your own custom contests
  • Trade International Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Options, Futures & Forex
  • 300 Built-in Investing, Personal Finance & Career Development Lessons
  • National Contests every Semester with Prizes
  • Students can earn financial literacy certificates
  • Budgeting Game for Personal Finance Classes
  • Live Chat Support & Account Managers for Teachers
  • Advanced Reporting Tools for Teachers
  • Advanced Research Tools
Learn more

FAQ

  • Does HowTheMarketWorks use real-time prices?

    Yes! We use real-time prices for US stocks and cryptocurrencies in our back-end system. However due to exchange rules, we can only display prices with a 15-minute delay on our website. This means after placing a trade, the actual trade price will appear on a portfolio 15 minutes later – but it is not possible to exploit a time delay to earn any trading advantage.

  • How long can I run my class contest?

    As long as you like – from a short 1-day trading challenge to a 10-year investing bonanza! Note – your contest must end at the end of a “day” – we do not support super-short intra-day trading sessions.

  • How much starting cash should I give my students?

    A “traditional” class stock game typically gives students $100,000, which allows them flexibility to invest in a wide range of companies. However, many teachers find this sets an unrealistically “high bar” for students to begin think about investing once they enter adulthood. With this in mind, we recommend starting your class stock game with between $1,000 and $20,000, and enable our “Fractional Trading” rule, allowing students to buy fractions of a share (which is allowed in popular real investing apps like RobinHood).

  • How should I grade the stock game?

    We have sample grading rubrics available on our PersonalFinanceLab website here. Note: PersonalFinanceLab is our premium, ad-free version with more reports and game modes, but the teacher resources and rubrics are available for free.

  • What teacher reports are available?

    Teachers can view the portfolios of any student in their class from the Class Rankings page (where they can also reset student passwords). Teachers can also export the complete portfolios and transaction histories of all students in their class from their Manage Contests page.

  • Can I get rid of the ads?

    We have our premium ad-free version available at PersonalFinanceLab.com, which also includes more game types (Retirement Planning mode, where students get cash deposits that they need to invest throughout the contest, Teams mode where students jointly manage a portfolio, Budgeting Mode where the investments in the stock game are based on savings transferred from our Budgeting Game).