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Money Trek is to investors as is a lab-based flight simulation is to airplane pilots - it is the ultimate tool to train you on chart-reading skills and risk-control discipline. We say this because... It is intriguing and challenging - in every "Trek" session you are equipped with an unknown stock in an unknown period of time, and you are allowed to trade in and out of the stock in this period aiming to make money and outperform the market (on paper of course). It is highly efficient - unlike other paper-trading tools, Money Trek allows you to virtually paper-trade through a 40-day period in a matter of minutes, allowing you to gain a lot of experience without dedicating too much time. It is educational and informative - you get help from all the necessary technical indicators when you are practicing with Money Trek. At the same time, it compiles a set of stats about your trading performance. Unlike other trading games, your goal here is not to speculate or to win prizes, but to improve your skills and develop risk-control discipline.

Now, we will show you how to use Money Trek in Illustration 1:

Illustration 1

1. Before or after a Money Trek session you can change the settings by following the link "Change Setting" pointed out by arrow A. You can specify the type of stocks you want to play with, for example S&P 500 components or Nasdaq 100 stocks. Additionally, you can adjust each "Trek" to allow for buying on margin/short-selling capabilities.
2. In any step of a "Trek" (the step number is in the upper right corner, see arrow C), your decision point is at the end of the stock chart - refer to arrow F in Illustration 1 - You need to decide to buy/sell (or short-sell if it's allowed) or do nothing.
3. While you are pondering about your next move, take a look at what happened to this stock and the overall market conditions for the day (the vertical panel indicated by arrow E displays the daily info).
4. Please pay close attention to your current account information (the panel on the bottom pointed out by arrow G), it tells you your current position, your buying power and your accumulative performance so far, versus the market performance marked by P&L of three major indices.
5. Very importantly, you can even add technical indicators onto the chart by using the pull-down menu pointed out by arrow D. Also, a visual display of what has been happening to the market is shown on the three index charts at the top (arrow B).
6. Once you have made up your mind, use the buttons on the bottom to take actions (refer to arrow H). If you decide, click on Buy or Sell, and a small textbox will show up on the right to let you enter the share number. Your buying power is calculated depending on your settings and there is a standard commission on all your trades.
7. Click on "Next Day" button (see arrow H) to move to the next day, at that time, all of the information - the charts, the daily data, account data, etc. - will be updated, and you will be making your next decision. If the session ends, the "New Test" button will appear on the bottom right of the chart, so you can begin your next "Trek" session.

More importantly, you can now retrieve the Report on your trading stats by clicking on the "Get Report" button, see arrow A. This report (see Illustration 2, shown below) provides you with invaluable information about the "Treks" you have played and your overall performance pairing up against the market.

In the "Test History" table, all your previous "Treks" are shown in a chronological order - the very first one in the table is the last "Trek" played. Please pay special attention to the "Performance Summary " table - where all your Money Trek practices are taken into consideration and compared to the market performances. For those of you who are not familiar with the Sharpe ratio, it is simply the measure of your excess return relative to the total variability of your portfolio, and it is named after William Sharpe, Nobel Laureate and developer of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). In short, higher Sharpe ratio implies better risk-adjusted investment performance. If your numbers (in the "Tester" column) better the ones of the indices by a good margin after hundreds of sessions, you are ready; otherwise, you may need some more practice.

Illustration 2

We hope you have found this overview of Money Trek helpful. But please bear in mind that, using the piloting analogy again, not everyone can walk out of the flight simulator as a top-gun pilot after only a couple of weeks training. Judging yourself and your abilities requires serious self-assessment. If you decide to go for the real thing, you need to be patient and persistent - even the best pilots perform routine trainings in the flight simulator! Continuously testing one's skills is an important part of staying at the top of the "class."

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