Stock market games are a type of virtual stock markets, but while virtual stock markets can be used both for market simulation and training, stock market games are strictly games that may or may not have a connection to real stock. The term stock market game is sometimes used to include applications used to simulate and gain trading experience, but in this article we will focus on the term in its truest sense, as games played for fun and/or to win prices.

Reality based

Reality based stock market games are based on data from one or several real stock markets and players compete with each other to see who can generate the biggest profits. Stock market games can be found based on most major stock markets. Some games require that you bet real money to be allowed to play while others require no real money at all.

Fantasy based

Fantasy based stock market games are stock market games where you can trade commodities that are normally not found on stock markets such as movies, sport players or teams, and television shows. They can also be set up around virtual stock exchanges with virtual stock on them or around completely imagined realms.

In virtual sport, movie and TV show stock market games, the value of the stock is usually tied to the performance of that team, movie or sport. If a movie does well the stock rises, if it does worse than expected the price drops.

Video stock exchange

Another type of stock market game is the video stock exchange. On these sites, the stock value is tied to the popularity of user submitted videos. A video is brought to the marketplace by an automated market maker and people can the buy and sell stock in that video. The site then pay out site currency to share owners after a certain amount of time. These site currencies might or might not be exchangeable for real currency. The time between a site’s floating and that the site pay out to the owners is usually rather short, one week is common.

This can be an effective way for the site to promote user activity and, in cases where site currency can be exchanged for real currency, to share revenue with its member. Today there are several sites like this but the first one was VideoIPO.tv that was launched in 2007. VideoIPO.tv is powered by the stock game script from Hollywood stock exchanger.