1- First of all, you must keep in mind that this stock market simulation game differs from how you would probably invest if this were real money. In real life, most of your investments would most likely be long-term investments. A Real-Stock game only spans over a few weeks period. So, do not be afraid to take some risk!

2- Make sure to invest all of your fictive money, or at least most of it. The lower your cash amount will be, the better your chances will be to see your money grow!

3- Buy stock that fluctuates a lot during the day.

4- Never forget about your investment portfolio! Buy low and sell high, everyday. Analyze the markets and its fluctuations daily.

5- Markets are closed during weekend and on holidays. Take advantage of those days off to analyse the market more carefully and closely and prepare yourself for Monday morning!

The « Submit results » button in the Real-Stock game is used to submit the current value of you investment portfolio. This feature is especially interesting towards the end of the game if you notice you are ahead of the other players. You can decide to just go for it, and submit your results to reduce (or increase!) the gap with the other players if you have great numbers. If you see you are not doing so great, you can decide to wait a little longer and wait towards the end of the game. The winner is the person with the best results on the official online standings. The game does not double-check what is on each player’s hard drive!

Beware of cheating! Real-Stock saves your game results on your hard drive in text format. While it may seem tempting to manually modify the content of the file, please note that the data file is encrypted. If you ever modify the content of the file, the encryption code would no longer be recognized and your game results would automatically be reset to zero.

Once you start a new game, you must keep playing that game on the same computer, without moving the files from their original location. You must then make sure to select the appropriate location where to save the game when you download it. This means that if you wish to play both from your home computer, and your work computer, you will not be able to play on the same game. Both games will be independent from each other.

While you are not allowed to play a single on more than one computer at a time, you may play more than one game using another nickname. This means you can start a game from home using the name “X” and start another one from work, calling yourself “Y”. If you do so, you can use the same email address. If you really wish to have more than one active game at a time on the same computer, you can also do so as long as you are saving a distinct copy of the game in different directories on your computer. Note that this way, more than one user can play using the same computer!