[keganunderwood]

I did that with google finance about a decade ago and the financial crisis wiped me out. I wasn't even good at managing fake money.

Disclosure: I have started putting away some money in a vanguard Roth IRA now. I don't think about it too much because it is the minimum vtsax would let me invest anyways.

[ethbro]

We were doing that in a high school course. Then 9/11 happened.

I suggested Delta.

A teammate asked his dad for a stock tip and invested the rest in a company none of us had ever heard of.

Delta popped back +25% or so over the next bit (from memory).

His company made some announcement and the stock doubled in value.

... I learned a lot about how the world works from that class.

[lostcolony]

In my middle school course when we played "the stock market game", I just picked a spread of reasonable stocks at the start. Every time we could rebalance our portfolio, I just read. I didn't care about the game. Got first or second in the class, and thus free pizza, for it. Kinda continuing that with in my current investment life; invest in index funds, walk away.