Researching What Stocks to Trade
Investors like to know the nature of their investment choices. Some prefer to conduct thorough due diligence by reviewing the business statements of a company before deciding to buy stock. This kind of fundamental analysis helps investors have the confidence to put money into a stock and leave it there for months or years with a long-term investing strategy. Other investors are comfortable simply reviewing price charts and conducting technical analysesof stocks.
Both types of analysis can be conducted quickly by looking in the research section. Simply clicking on one of the ticker symbols displayed on the research pages will take you to a summary page complete with an interactive chart, company profile, and fundamental data.
The research page also has a powerful stock screener built into it. This allows you to specify one or more attributes of companies you’d like to research. The functionality of the screener is very deep, but you don’t have to know everything about it to generate a list of possible stocks to review.
Tracking Changes in Stock Value
The portfolio tab lists the positions you are holding and the current value of those positions based on market data. It gives you a quick snapshot of the account’s total balance as well as the total for each individual position. Quick stats show you how much gain or loss your account has made today, the annualized return you are making, and the remaining cash and buying power in the account.
You can also review performance history over multiple time frames and review your individual trade history, too. The historical trade data can be sorted into stocks, options, and short-selling positions. There is also a small panel on this page that displays your rank among all other active Simulator users.
Executing a Virtual Stock Trade
Selecting the trade tab gives you access to executing trading orders. Here, you will first want to specify whether you are making a stock or option trade. Next, you specify the ticker symbol of the stock you want to trade or the underlying stock of the option contracts you want to trade. Either way, a price quote and chart will appear so that you can review the price at which the stock is currently trading.
When you have reviewed the price information, you can specify the action you want to take with your order: buy, sell, short, or buy to cover. This is the same functionality that exists on retail broker accounts with margin trading. However, only the most common three order types used in retail broker accounts are available: market, limit, or stop orders.
To execute an order, you might specify an action (buy), an order type (market), and a quantity of shares. There is a show max link available to allow you to see the maximum number of shares you can buy based on the available virtual cash in your Simulator account. If you buy the maximum shares possible, you will have put all your virtual cash into that company. If you want a portfolio with more than one stock position, you should avoid buying the maximum number of shares.
It is important to remember that the Simulator runs on data that is delayed by 15 minutes. That means it will take 15 minutes for any order you place to show up in your portfolio list.
