stock market survivor online game

We have a pension, but we have also put a small amount in our IRAs. My dad had the unfortunate and costly problem of his company changing the pension plan shortly before he retired, so I don't quite trust pension plans, though ours seems to be pretty good. It still makes me nervous relying on something I have no control over.

Anyway, we go the indexed mutual fund route, so I don't need to pick stocks or bonds. But this week I subbed for a teacher and one of the classes he teaches is a personal finance class and they are just starting their investing section. This is how I heard about Wall Street Survivor. (http://wallstreetsurvivor.com/)

It's an online site where you are given virtual money and can "invest" it in the stock market. You can pay to have investing lessons, but you don't have to sign up for that in order to have a free account. And you can set up competitions. This class is in a competition with each other. I'm on my own.

I decided I wanted to give it a try. I didn't want to spend a lot of time picking stocks, however, like I would have if I were really investing my money. What I did was find a website that told me what the major investing sectors are (basic materials, conglomerates, consumer goods, financial, industrial goods, services, technology, and utilities) and then I tried to choose one stock for each category.

I did not look at returns or anything; I just picked stocks of things I use (well, I confess, I don't use John Deere tractors, but they certainly are around):

AmeriGas Partners (APU)--my propane supplier
Wal-Mart (WMT)--the store I have a love/hate relationship with
Toyota (TM)--brand of 2 of our 3 vehicles
Wells Fargo (WFC)--my bank
John Deere (DE)--everybody around here seems to love them
Cumulus Media (CMLS)--I listen to their radio programs
Dell Computers (DELL)--we have a Dell--I would have chosen Acer first, but it's not traded in the US, so I skipped it
NV Energy (NVE)--they provide my power

I divided up the magical $100,000 dollars (divided by 12 = $12,500 per stock company) and bought however many shares I could. At $3.42/share that allowed me to buy 3,655 shares of CMLS but at $83.08 I could only buy 150 shares of Dell and of Toyota...

In the end, I still had a little money left over, so I "bought" some Wendy's stock (WEN).

Since I signed up after the stock market closed, I think there's a chance that something gets adjusted when my "buys" go through in the morning...if I understand it (which I don't, so we'll see what happens).

I haven't decided how long to play as I'm a long-term investor, but I think it will be fun to see how it goes.  I don't know that I'll really learn anything...other than I might be glad I really use index funds instead of hand-picking my stocks. I wonder if anyone in my family will want to try.