How to use the Rise to Riches stock market simulator

1. Start a game

On the homepage you have two main buttons:

• Play Now opens a short setup. Pick a length (5, 10 or 20 years, or the full 1990 to 2025 era) and Basic or Advanced. The starting year is picked at random so you cannot choose the period. The game still shows calendar years, so this does not remove hindsight.
• Customize, from that same setup, lets you choose the start year and length yourself (within 1990 to 2025) and which stocks you start with.
• Play With Friends opens multiplayer, where one person hosts a room and others join with a code.

2. Basic, Advanced and Hard

• Basic starts you with a small set of stocks, plus an S&P 500 index fund, gold, oil, CDs and a high-yield savings account. More stocks unlock during the game.
• Advanced opens a search over 166 real companies, plus Bitcoin from 2010, with a Trade button and cost-basis tracking. Which companies you can buy depends on the year.
• Hard is used in Client Contracts, a separate fund-manager game where the years are hidden. The main stock game setup offers Basic and Advanced.

3. How time and prices move

At normal speed one simulated year takes about a minute. In solo games you can switch between 1×, 2× and 4× speed, and turn on Pause at each new year if you want time to think. Multiplayer games follow the host's shared clock instead, and only the host can pause. Each year's total change comes from that year's real annual return. The ups and downs inside the year are generated by the simulation, so the exact path is not a replay of real daily prices. The methodology page explains this in detail.

4. Investing your cash

You start with $5,000 and receive another $5,000 every simulated quarter. Open an investment to see what it is, then buy or sell shares. The recurring investment switch can split each new deposit across up to five investments you choose. Random life events, like a car repair, take money out of your cash now and then.

5. Deposits are not profit

Your return only counts what your investments earned. The $5,000 deposits and life-event costs are left out of the return, so someone who simply held cash would show close to 0%, not a big gain. Keep this in mind when you compare your final wealth with a friend who played a longer game.

6. The benchmark at the end

When the game ends you see how your return compares with putting the same deposits into the S&P 500 index fund over the same years. Beating that benchmark is harder than it sounds, and it is the most useful number on the end screen.

7. Saving and resuming

Save and exit keeps your game in this browser so you can pick it up later from the Continue card on the homepage. Saves live on the device you played on. Quitting a game instead removes its save. If you are signed in, finished games can also show up in your account history.

8. Solo or classroom

Solo games are for practice on your own. In a multiplayer room everyone plays the same years at the same time on the host's clock. A host can turn on Classroom when creating the room, which turns chat off by default, turns off AI feedback and keeps results off the public leaderboard. See the teacher guide for running it with a class.

First-session exercises

1. Use Customize to set a start year, a 5-year length and Basic mode. Put every deposit into the S&P 500 index fund. Note your return. This is your baseline.
2. Use Customize again with the same start year, length and mode, and invest every deposit the same way in time, but split it between three or four investments. Did you beat your baseline? The moves inside each year and life events are random, so one pair of runs is not proof.
3. With the same Customize settings, try a game with recurring investment on, then one where you trade often. Which one took more effort for a better result?
4. Use Customize to start in 2000 or 2007 and watch how cash, CDs and gold behave next to stocks. Our crash history page has ideas.

This is an educational simulation, not investment advice. Past returns do not predict future returns. Next: how diversification works.