Virtual Trading Shown to be Valuable Addition to University and High School Business Classes and to Increase Investing Confidence

Stock-Trak, the web’s leading provider of educational stock market games and virtual portfolio simulations for university and high schools students, has completed a survey of its StockTrak.com and HowTheMarketWorks.com users that supports the use of virtual trading in the classroom.
 
“With the increased emphasis on personal finance and financial literacy in the high school and university classrooms, we felt that Stock-Trak was best suited to answer the question of the value of virtual trading in the classroom,” says Mark T. Brookshire, Founder of Stock-Trak.  “The results were amazing as 99% of the students said the virtual trading exercise added value to the class and 96% said it increased their confidence in their investing ability.”
 
The survey covered 2,188 student users of the StockTrak.com and HowTheMarketWorks.com sites.  A full 80% of the users said that virtual trading was an “Extremely” or “Very” valuable part of their class and 19% said the virtual trading was a “Moderately” or “Slightly” valuable part of the class.
 
In terms of increasing their confidence level in their investing abilities as a result of using the websites, 43% said that using the websites made them “Extremely” or “Very” confident, 41% said “Moderately” more confident, and 11% said “Slightly” more confident.
 
“These results confirm the role that virtual trading has in the financial literacy movement.  Students find value in the exercise and it increases their investing confidence,” Mr. Brookshire added. 
 
“The results of this survey indicate quite strongly the valuable role of a virtual stock market game in the classroom,” says Mr. Brookshire.  “We are not the final answer to the financial literacy issue in the U.S., but I know we are part of the solution.”
 
Stock-Trak’s StockTrak.com website is the #1 portfolio simulation for university finance classes and is used by over 1,000 professors each year.  StockTrak allows professors to customize a trading period for their class by selecting trading dates, initial cash balance, commission structure, position limits, and other trading parameters.
 
Stock-Trak’s HowTheMarketWorks.com site is a free stock market game site that gives users $100,000 in virtual cash and allows them to buy and sell U.S. stocks, ETFs and mutual funds and test their stock portfolio skills against their classmates.  “As a free stock market game, the HowTheMarketWorks.com site is very popular among high school and the introductory college finance and business classes.  It is perfectly designed for anyone such as teachers, instructors, professors and investment clubs, to create their own private contest, establish their own trading rules, and invite their classmates or friends” says Mr. Brookshire.
 

Contact Information

Mark Brookshire

Founder

HowTheMarketWorks.com

mark@stocktrak.com