📜 Stock Paper Trading Rules (Beta)

A risk-free stock simulator. Learn how markets behave, compete on the leaderboard, refine your strategy — all with virtual money.

1. The Account

• Starting balance: $10,000.00 in cash per portfolio.
• Portfolio limit: Free accounts get 1 portfolio. Premium and trial accounts get up to 10.
• Login required: You must be signed in to create or trade. Anyone can view public portfolios and the leaderboard.
• Privacy toggle: New portfolios are public by default and listed on the leaderboard. You can flip any portfolio to Private at any time — private portfolios are only visible to you (and to site admins).
• No portfolio reset, no portfolio delete: Once you start trading, you cannot wipe the slate clean. This keeps the leaderboard honest — nobody gets to retry their losing weeks.

2. Pricing & Sessions

You can trade 24/7. The fill price always comes from Yahoo Finance — you cannot specify a price. The price source depends on what session is active when you click the button, and every trade is tagged with that session so the leaderboard can later show you three different PnL views.

• RTH (09:30–16:00 ET, weekdays): Fill = Yahoo's live intra-day quote.
• Pre / Post (04:00–09:30 and 16:00–20:00 ET): Fill = closest extended-hours 1m print (falls back to 5m, then quote API).
• Overnight / weekends / holidays: Fill = the last available extended-hours print, or the prior RTH close as a last resort. The trade is allowed but the price is stale — the Realistic view below corrects for this.
• Symbol set: Anything Yahoo lists (U.S. stocks and ETFs in USD recommended). Examples: AAPL, SPY, NVDA, VOO, BRK-B.
• Currency: All bookkeeping is in USD. Only USD-quoted tickers are accepted — non-USD venues (Borsa İstanbul, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Toronto, etc.) are rejected at purchase. The autocomplete only suggests U.S. exchanges (NASDAQ, NYSE, NYSE Arca, NYSE American, BATS, OTC).

Three PnL views on the leaderboard

Because off-hours fills can be stale, every portfolio is tracked in three modes in parallel. Toggle them on the leaderboard or your portfolio page.

• Realistic (RTH Open) — default leaderboard ranking. Every non-RTH trade is repriced to the next RTH session's 09:30 ET opening print. This is the most defensible "what would have actually happened at a real broker" number — it neutralises the unrealistic edge of trading at a 1–72 hour stale price.
• As Recorded — The price the system captured the moment the order was submitted: Yahoo Finance’s last trade. During closed market hours that “last trade” is the previous session’s 16:00 ET close (or, on weekends/holidays, Friday’s close). If you tried to actually execute the same trade for real, your broker would fill you at the next session’s open, which can be materially different. This view does not, and cannot, represent the PnL you would have realised on a live brokerage account — it exists only to inspect the raw trade log and to compare against Realistic so you can see how much off-hours pricing flattered (or hurt) the booked number.
• Non-RTH Prices — Non-RTH trades repriced to the 04:00 ET premarket open of the relevant premarket session (same day for pre / overnight-closed, next trading day for post / weekend / holiday). Useful only if your real broker actually supports extended-hours orders — most retail accounts do not, and even those that do face thin liquidity and wider spreads than the premarket print suggests. Older trades may fall back to the as-recorded price when Yahoo’s prepost intraday history isn’t available.

All three modes are recomputed continuously — buy a stock at 02:00 ET on a Sunday and the next price-refresh tick will populate its RTH-open reference for the upcoming Monday session.

3. Commission & Cost Basis

• Commission rate: 0.1% of the trade value (USD amount), applied to both buys and sells.
• Buy math: If you spend $1,000 on AAPL, commission is $1.00 and $999.00 goes into shares at the current Yahoo price.
• Sell math: Selling proceeds = shares × price × (1 - 0.001). The net is added to cash.
• Partial sells: You can sell any portion of a position — enter the share count or use the 25% / 50% / 75% / All chips. Cost basis is pro-rated against the remaining shares; the average buy price stays the same.
• Adding to a position: Buying a ticker you already hold averages the cost basis weighted by share count.

4. What You Can and Cannot Do

Allowed

• Buy any USD-quoted Yahoo Finance ticker, in any USD amount you have available cash for.
• Sell any open position at the latest close.
• Trade as often as you like — there is no daily limit, no day-trader rule.
• Hold cash indefinitely — no interest is paid, but you are not forced to be fully invested.

Not allowed (simulator limitations)

• No shorting — you cannot sell what you do not own.
• No margin — you can never spend more than your cash balance.
• No options, futures, or crypto — equities and ETFs only.
• No limit, stop, or scheduled orders — every trade is market-on-click at the latest close.
• No portfolio reset, no portfolio delete — if you blow up, you blow up. Your record stays on the board.

5. Leaderboard

• Only portfolios marked Public with at least one trade are listed.
• Default sort is by return %. You can also sort by absolute P/L, total value, or trade count.
• Trader names are shown as masked emails (e.g. il***z) for privacy.
• Anyone — even logged-out visitors — can browse public portfolios and view their full position lists and trade history.

6. Prices Refresh Automatically

Open positions are re-marked to the latest Yahoo close on a server schedule (roughly hourly during U.S. market hours plus one final pass after the close). The portfolio detail page shows the timestamp of the last update.

If you place a trade, the server fetches a fresh quote at that moment — you do not have to wait for the schedule.

7. Watchlists

Each portfolio carries up to 3 named watchlists alongside its open positions — lightweight tracking lists for tickers you want to keep an eye on without committing virtual cash. They appear as extra tabs next to Open Positions on the portfolio page.

• Up to 3 lists per portfolio, each holding up to 30 tickers. You name each list whatever you like (e.g. AI plays, Earnings week, Long-term).
• Added Price is captured once, the moment you add the ticker — the Yahoo price at that instant, same source the buy form uses. It never changes after that, so you can always see your entry reference.
• Current Price is refreshed by the same cron that re-marks open positions (roughly hourly during U.S. market hours + a final pass after the close). No manual refresh needed.
• Δ % is the gain or loss since you added the ticker, computed from Added Price → Current Price. Green = up since you added it, red = down.
• Short note (up to 200 chars) per ticker — e.g. "watching for $180 break", "earnings 2026-07-29". Click the note field, type, then click away to save.
• USD-only, same as positions — non-USD venues are rejected when you try to add them.
• Public by default — if the portfolio is public, anyone can see the watchlists (read-only). Only the portfolio owner can add, remove, rename, or delete lists.
• No effect on PnL or the leaderboard — watchlists are pure tracking. Nothing is bought or sold, no cash moves.

8. Fair Play

• One account per person. Don't farm leaderboard slots with multiple registrations — we will remove duplicates.
• Don't try to game thin or halted tickers. Positions in obvious manipulation candidates may be disqualified from the leaderboard.
• If you find a bug that lets you exploit the simulator, please email info@fxcryptobots.com instead of using it.

9. Disclaimer

Stock Paper Trading is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. All numbers are virtual. Nothing on this page or anywhere on fxcryptobots.com constitutes investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past simulated performance does not predict future real-world performance. You are solely responsible for any real-world investment decisions. See the full risk disclaimer.

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