Playing the stockmarket,,,safely

[XabbaRus]

OK I know there is no real way to play it safely but I was wondering about virtualy.

I would like to play the stock market but I am not ready to risk real money. I was wondering if there are any programs where you can virtually play the stock market but it uses real world data on a day to day minute by minute basis.

Basically a program where I can set up an "account" so to speak, buy stock virtually and then how I have done. Would be fun to do to get an idea how the market works
before I risk real money.

[VipertheSniper]

In Austria, a newspaper does something like that, each "player" gets 10.000 virtual €'s and who has got the most, after 1 or 2 months I think, gets 10.000 € for real I think.

So there is certainly something available to trade virtually, but I wouldn't know where to start searching. On the other hand you could of course do it all on paper, sure it's tedious, but gets the job done all the same, I mean the stockmarkets have all an internet platform where you can watch how the stocks rise and fall, in 5 minutes intervals or so (atleast on the Viennese stockexchange)

[Skybird]

Amiga had a software for that, named Wallstreet Wizard.
Boring.

[peterloo]

There is NO real way to play it safety, without risk. Risk, unfortunately, is usually proportional to the return

However, if you're afraid of losing $$$ (which is the destiny of most "casual" investors, as the fund managers kills them easily by some tricks like manipulating the stock price by the capital they gain), or play them solely for fun, you may just select a stock, play it with vitual money, and see the return afterwards.

[Camaero]

Go to www.nyse.com and open up a portfolio. You get to choose how much money you have in each stock and it keeps track of it all for you without you actually using real money. I am up $5000.00 right now. I wish it had been real money!

"They know nothing! They know nothing!" -> Jim Cramer fan.

[Kapitan]

http://vse.marketwatch.com/Game/Homepage.aspx

One i use to practice with i have both real investments and virtual ones havnt done too bad on either.

[XabbaRus]

I also found one called virtual trader. I wonder if they have rss feeds or whatever that will tell you how your stock is doing

[XabbaRus]

I'm looking at the NYSE one, set up a protfolio. Chose my company put in 1000 shares and then I have to put in the price I paid for them...Do I make that one up?