Education Center
Learn investing by simulating it
Every resource here is written to pair with the free stock market simulator — read the idea, then go play the thirty years of market history where it actually mattered. Teachers can start with the classroom guide.
Resources
How to invest in stocks — beginner's guide
Stocks, index funds, commodities, CDs and savings accounts explained in plain language, with three basic rules for new investors.
Running a stock market game with high school students
What a single class period actually looks like minute by minute, what students do, what they get wrong, and how to run the debrief.
How to use the stock market simulator
A walkthrough of this site's controls: Basic and Advanced modes, years and length, deposits versus profit, the benchmark, saving and classroom rooms.
Stock market crashes explained: 2000, 2008 and 2020
What happened in three crashes, what annual data shows and hides, and exercises you can replay in the simulator.
How diversification works
Why spreading money across assets changes your outcome, worked through with the exact asset menu the simulator uses.
What is an investment simulator?
Live paper trading versus historical replay, what makes a simulator worth your time, and a three-run practice routine that shows what your instincts cost you.
Methodology & data sources
Where the historical stock, index, gold, oil, CD, rate and housing figures come from, and how the simulation turns them into prices.
Where the simulators fit
The stock simulator covers markets, risk and diversification. The real estate game covers illiquid assets, leverage and holding costs. The Sandbox lets a class ask counterfactual questions — what if the 2008 crash had been twice as deep — and watch the timeline change.
All three use virtual money. Nothing here is financial advice; see the methodology page for exactly how the numbers are produced and simplified.
Start with the simulator
Twenty years of real market history in about twenty minutes. No account, no download.
Open the stock simulator