Stock market simulations have existed for about as long as the actual stock exchanges themselves have been around. however, it has only been recently, especially in the Internet age, that stock market simulators have come to the forefront.devfault.com
With the dot.com explosion of the late 90’s and the dot.com collapse of 2000-2002, with most of those companies gaining rapidly because of stock pricings and IPO’s, stock simulators began to appear so people could test theories without risking money. Try new investment strategies and loss-leader plans without actually putting anything at risk.
When the collapse occurred – people went to the simulators and began investing more time to make them more accurate, to try and reflect what had happened. The simulators became living stock markets themselves, with a 20 minute delayed quote from the NYSE of course 🙂 The companies running these simulators did not want people pulling live data off the game, then going to another company and investing, thus losing the commission.
Because at the bottom line, that is what all this comes down to – how can we entertain you long enough for you to feel confident so you will then invest your money through us so we may gain commission? Stock market simulators are all about confidence. Once you can play the sim properly, you can feel confident enough to put your money down and play the real market – hopefully with the same result a the sim, a gain rather than a loss.
However … if that is the case, why are there also Fantasy stock markets, where you buy and sell things that are in no way possibly real or even have a chance to be real? Because the very thing that makes a fantasy market unreal is that which pulls you in – the chance to imagine you can buy or sell whatever commodity they offer.
