New Online Game Teaches Investing

[Rowan Oak]

New Online Game Teaches Investing
November 16, 2018
Allan Roth

It was about time! Late last month, Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF) launched a free online game to actually teach high school students how to invest.

[BogleMelon]

Very nice educational game. Thanks for sharing

[linenfort]

Doesn’t work on my tablet, but I’m looking forward to trying it on a desktop.

Edit: fun!

[jharkin]

On my iPad it would only work in Safari, not chrome..... and it was difficult to play because it moves so fast for the clumsy touch screen keyboard input.

I did play it though on PC... it was fun, but you constantly feel like you are racing against the clock to move money around. I liked the fact thah you could choose a stock index fund but I think it would be better to have had various fund options - large cap, small cap, int, bonds, mm, etc... I tried to do a 60/40 portfolio and its challenging when the only "bond" like options are CDs (and you can only have 3 at once) and treasury bonds.

Interestingly after I completed the game it told me it was using 1986-2006 actual results? I wonder if it randomizes and uses a different period each time...

In the end I got crushed by the computer, I think to win you need to:
#1 - pick riskier investments and get lucky
#2 - always keep all your money invested.

At times I just couldn't click fast enough to keep everything invested. When I finished the game the pie chart told me i had something like 37k ! in uninterested "pocket money"

[grabiner]

I tried it also. There is a good indication of the importance of an emergency fund; mine wasn't always quite large enough, forcing me to sell stock to meet some emergencies. However, there isn't really a good illustration of diversification; I kept some money in CDs and bonds, which lowered my returns but is what I would do as a real investor.

The game also doesn't allow you to build a bond ladder. I had a CD ladder, with three 3-year CDs. But it only allowed me three bonds, and I didn't discover this problem until I tried to add a fourth year to my bond ladder.

I did recognize the real period, as I saw bond and CD yields drop, and my index fund lost 20% of its value in one day in 1987. (And if this is updated next year, index funds will lose 20% of their value in one month in 2018.)

I would expect that individual stock investments would outperform the market in the simulation, because the example companies have to last for the whole 20 years; any Internet stock which became worthless in the bubble cannot be used in a simulation which goes past 2002.

[linenfort]

Interestingly after I completed the game it told me it was using 1986-2006 actual results? I wonder if it randomizes and uses a different period each time...

It does, yes.