This fantasy share trading game offers thousands in cash prizes!

Hargreaves Lansdown's Big Deal game lets you play the markets without risk AND be in with a chance of winning some real cash.
Have you ever wanted to buy shares but are worried that you might lose some money? There are many fantasy share trading games, where you don’t have to spend a single penny.
Investment company Hargreaves Lansdown’s Big Deal is one of the best and, uniquely, it allows you to play for cash prizes. So if you make decent virtual money with your share picks, you could make a nice little bit of cash in the real world too!
What's more, if you sign up before 28th February you'll get an extra £2,500 to invest.
How it works
Once you’ve registered, you have a little over £100,000 to invest in shares, funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), investment trusts or a mixture of all. You can pick them yourself or let the game pick them for you via the lucky dip function.
You can then buy and sell as you wish.
You can also invite friends to join you and form a company of traders. And the more friends you invite, the more times you’ll be entered into a monthly prize draw to win £500.
There are game periods, at the end of which the best-performing player and company wins a cash prize of £10,000 apiece. The current game period ends on 30th May. There are also cash prizes of £1,000 for the best-performing players and companies at the end of each month.
You can also earn various awards for different behaviours, ranging from placing a number of trades to increasing the value of your portfolio by a certain percentage. The more awards you earn, the more extra (virtual) cash you’ll be given.
Organise your financial life with Plans
Working out what to buy
You might already have an idea of what companies or funds you want to invest in. Indeed, many people have a gut feeling about certain investments but use fantasy games to see if their hunches would pay off in the real world.
In The Big Deal, you can look at factsheets about particular shares or funds before you buy. This contains performance data, news stories, broker forecasts and other types of information you would find in a ‘live’ online share dealing service.
It’s only a game...
Obviously The Big Deal, although based on real-world data, is a fantasy game. As such, it’s easier to both take more risks and not feel the pressure to sell so acutely as you would if it was your money on the line.
And that’s arguably when you need to be a bit more cold and analytical about your investments. We’ll look at making the move from fantasy investing to the real world in detail in a future article.
But if you want to dip your toe into the investment pool without losing your shirt, The Big Deal is a very good place to start.
Free guide to picking shares and funds
More on investing:
How to get started investing in the stock market
Stock market predictions for 2014
Find the hidden costs in your investment fund
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Comments
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Besides having a 'real' portfolio, I've been playing this game for a week. It's worth trying. It's not the same as investing for real. I was asked to invest all the money at the start, I would wait for opportunities and drip feed the investment in real life. For anyone who has never traded and bought shares it will give you some idea of what is involves. You will soon see that the spread, the commission and the stamp duty give you a big paper loss when you invest in smaller companies that is hard to recover. This could be why they don't do so well and struggle for investment?
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These little gems are a brilliant introduction to market trading without the risk. I am currently using the share.com dummy account to try my hand for when I decide to actually take the dip. Besides, I have no faith in pension managers, and would rather manage my own money. After all, if I lose what I have invested, then I have no one to blame but myself, while retaining the possibility that I could make more money in investing than I could allowing someone else to invest for me, and who charges me for the privilege. (I took out an endowment once, then discovered when I cashed it in that the first £800 was his commission, even though it was for £40 a month. Yep, the first two years of contributions went directly into his pocket before my money would start making money).
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14 February 2014