My Experiences with Virtual Stock Trading Game

On the 25th of June I type the link noted on our Stock trading Game page (“http://www.marketwatch.com/game" Stock Trading Game - Free stock market game - MarketWatch.com,” n.d.). I make a note of the Stock Market Terms on the blue sheet. I read the rules and surfed the site. I performed my first trade Early on Thursday the 28th. I was immediately put into 2nd place out of 4 participants. I bought JC Penney (JCP) thinking that it couldn’t drop any further. I also short sold my company Costco Wholesale (COST); didn’t think it could go any higher. I didn’t really understand well the short sale. I should have put a limit on the short purchase so I would have more control over the price. I signed up for email info from several of the advertisers and checked out the mountain of information, charts, tips, analysis’s, hints, suggestions, and free advice provided. I used many of the reports on The Wall Street Journal’s ‘Market Watch’ page. Yahoo! Finance also has ‘recently quoted’ comparison function that I found very helpful (“COST: 95.61 -0.34 (-0.35%) : Costco Wholesale Corporation - Yahoo! Finance,” nod.). Since they appeared more stable, I started to look to the Bond and other financial Markets. I found this on the ‘Markets’ tab on ‘Market Watch’:

Map of the Market (a combination of more than 20 Indexes)

HEALTH CARE - Down 1.7%

CONSUMER GOODS – Down 1.02%

TECHNOLOGY– Down 1.42%

INDUSTRIALS– Down 1.05%

CONSUMER SERVICES– Down 0.76%

FINANCIALS– Down 1.55%

OIL & GAS– Down 0.55%

UTILITIES– Down 0.15%

BASIC MATERIALS– Down 1.36%

TELECOMMUNICATIONS– Down 0.99%

as of 3:07am EDT, 7/22/2012

(“Stock Market News - Bond Market News - Currencies Markets News,” n.d.)

This page breaks up ‘The Market’ into 10 sectors and provides trends (today everything is trending down aprox.1 %.)

At first I saw this as a cue to diversification and started to break up my purchases into the different industries, Health Care, Technology, Consumer Services, Consumer Goods,...