National competition
Stock Market Game
A live trading simulation over a full session, ranked against every other team in the region.
SMG
The format, at a glance
- Team
- Small student teams with a teacher or advisor
- Account
- A virtual $100,000 portfolio
- Instruments
- Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds at real quotes
- Ranking
- A live leaderboard against other teams in your region
- Season
- Fall and spring sessions
Simulation · Trading · Beginner-friendly
What it is
The Stock Market Game gives your team a virtual $100,000 and a live market. You buy and sell stocks, bonds, and mutual funds at real quotes across the session, and your portfolio is ranked against every other team in your region while it happens.
It is the friendliest way into competitive finance and still the fastest way to learn the mechanics: how an order actually fills, what transaction costs do to a small trade, and why a concentrated position feels brilliant right up until it does not.
Sessions run in the fall and the spring, so a member can compete twice in a year and treat the first as a rehearsal.
How MCBA prepares you
Every member gets the prep below inside the Competition Academy, built around this competition rather than adapted from a generic business course.
Learn the mechanics before they cost you
Short lessons on how orders work, reading a stock chart, and building a portfolio, then a market mechanics quiz that checks you actually absorbed them.
The Portfolio Simulator as a practice account
Trade a simulated portfolio in the portal for as long as you like before the session opens. Mistakes made here cost nothing and teach the same lesson.
An SMG mock competition
A scored run with the same shape as the real session, plus portfolio challenges and an asset allocation activity that force you to justify a weighting.
A habit that separates the top teams
Write a one-line thesis for every trade and review the portfolio weekly as a team. MCBA coaches this from the first session, because ranked teams are usually the disciplined ones, not the lucky ones.
Where it sits in the season
Sessions run through the fall and again in the spring.
Members trade a simulated portfolio through the fall, tracked on a live leaderboard. The mechanics of real markets, low-stakes.
Each bar is a milestone's typical window across a school year, August to July. They are windows, not dates: exact dates are confirmed with chapters.
Prep for SMG starts the day you join
Members get the study guides, practice exams, flashcards, and mock rounds for SMG, plus a chapter to compete with.