[kogepathic]

Why did you decide to do it with $50,000 and Robinhood instead of just creating a bot to trade stocks on an Investopedia stock simulator account? [0]

I mean, I understand that $50k might not be a lot for you, but if the aim is to see what the majority of random people on the internet feel like buying, while measuring the return of these decisions, this could be accomplished without putting up any actual money.

[0] http://www.investopedia.com/simulator/

[stockstream]

One of the reasons I decided to do this project in the first place is because nobody has ever done this before (at least based on my research), and I wanted to be the first. There are plenty of stock simulators out there, so fake money didn't sound appealing to me.

[fullshark]

The actual money aspect is why this blew up. No one would care if it was fake money.

[kogepathic]

> The actual money aspect is why this blew up. No one would care if it was fake money.

Two things:

1. This is assuming it was done for the press coverage, and not just as a hobby project

2. If I were to do this, I don't think I'd advertise it was fake money. What's the difference anyway? It's not as if people on the internet benefit at all from the investment return. I always assumed this was more of a "Twitch plays Pokemon" thing than anything more serious.

[fullshark]

I wasn't assuming it was about press coverage necessarily (though maybe it was), but that in order to be interesting it needs a critical mass of people participating. If it wasn't real money then that wouldn't happen.

[guscost]

Random people will make different choices because it's real money, for one.