Is there a site that I can practice buying and selling stocks without paying money?

Question

Do they help you figure out your trading expenses and taxes?

Answer 1

Those are two separate questions. For practicing buying/selling, you can use most any brokerage firm. These are all better than places like top10traders, investopedia and any game you might use.

For taxes, some are better than others.


There are a lot of good brokerages depending on what you like and how you trade.

Barron's has a great article on brokerages that they publish each year. (Latest one was in March 6, 2006). Kiplinger does one too.

Here’s the link to the Barron’s article.
http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1550280182488.html

Here’s the link to the Kiplinger’s July 2006 article which isn’t bad either.
http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2006/07/brokers.html


For basic stuff, E*Trade, Ameritrade, and Scottrade are sufficient. For more complex trades, I'd recommend Optionsxpress, ThinkorSwim, or interactivebrokers.

Check it out and if you have any questions, let me know.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

Buy a copy of Quicken and set up a fake account in the software. Put an opening balance of whatever $ amount you want to "play" with. Then, enter your trades in there as if you were really buying the stocks. It will track your basis, current values (delayed), and tax consequences.

Figure $12 commissions on every trade and give yourself 4% APR interest on money market funds each month.

Answer 3

This may not be the same thing, but there is a website called hsx.com. It stands for "Hollywood Stock Exchange". Instead of businesses and whatnot, you trade movie stars and movies. They start you off with a 2 million dollar portfolio. Its free and it gives you a quasi idea about how stock exchanges in general work. You also can find out about movies 1 or 2 years in advance. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

If there is it is a waste of time. There are people that are great gamblers. You may of played with them, they are the ones that get all the cookies even if thee boxes are opened up. These are the same people that loose all their money when they go to the casino.

Money when it is at risk is different than money not at risk. To learn how to invest use real money. Open an account for $2,000 and make investments that do not exceed $400 ($500 including brokers fees). This is the type of investments that permits you to learn and keep you from going broke at the same time.

Investing is stock is not the way to set up your life, if you need the income from stock for anything, stock is not for you. Buying a roof over your head is more important, prepaying your mortgage is better than most stock investments.

Answer 5

You might want to take a look at http://www.top10traders.com - this is a free site that lets you create a portfolio of stocks with $100,000 in "play" money. Each day the site ranks the best performing portfolios, so you can see how your picks perform compared to other investors. You can also read posts on investing from the best traders, as well as share your own investing ideas. There is also a charting feature , so you can see how your portfolio performs compared to the S&P 500.

Here are this month's best traders:

http://www.top10traders.com/Top10Standings.aspx

Good luck.

Answer 6

The direct answer to the question as asked is to deposit the $1,000 in a brokerage account (drop by Fidelity or TD Waterhouse). You'll then be able to buy stocks through that account through that broker. But, with just $1,000, you're better off buying an ETF for some measure of diversification -- which, I know, raises more questions. An ETF is just a fund (comprised of multiple stocks for which you'll be a partial owner) that trades like a stock with the advantage of letting you end up with a basket of stocks rather than just one egg to bet on. Commissions are MUCH higher for placing orders through a broker than they are through an online account -- with more significance for small accounts than for large ones (because they represent a higher percentage of your funds). The broker can tell you how to set up that online account (no extra charge). Bring your Dad with you. He may have to set up the account under his name and let you trade through it. The more helpful answer is learn first, buy later. It will give you better odds of a good outcome. BETTERINVESTING.ORG has educational tools. Add their Stock Selection Handbook to your investing library. It should prove an excellent first investment for you. And kudos to your father for getting you started early and to you for being receptive. I'm impressed.

Answer 7

OptionsXpress. They'll open an account for with no minimum. They have a virtual trading section where you can invest without using your own money. It's called paper trading.

Answer 8

In addition to muss51 answer, most any online brokerage will allow "paper-trading" (where you use pretend dollars to see how you do) and back-testing (where you can test your methods to see how you would have done historically). Some of these places will mandate that you deposit some money though to open an account. Google online brokerage discount brokers.

Answer 9

yes there are plenty of them out there just type in free trading, or free simulated trading and then sit down because you will get hundreds of pages to choose from Hope this helps

Answer 10

Try with Investopedia. They are part of Yahoo and you can log in to their simulator with your yahoo login.

you have 10,000 virtual money + realistically done transaction fees, rankings and so on.

The -pedia in the title is about the huge library that they have and you can read and learn about plenty of terms and strategies.