Student Guide

How to use the Student Dashboard

After logging in, you will be brought to the page you see below, the Student Dashboard, where your portfolio in the Stock Game, your progress in the Budget Game, and your assignments are available. Other useful widgets are “My Watchlist” which you can edit to track particular stocks or ETF’s.

How to Place Your First Trade

To access the trading pit, you can select “Stocks” from the dropdown menu under “Stock Game” on the main menu. Alternatively, if your class has more securities available you can choose whichever one from the list. Your teacher may have included bonds and/or mutual funds as well.

If you’re in a more advanced class, you will also have other security types available like options, futures or forex. For a tutorial on how to trade all the available security types in your class, please go to the Video Library.

Stock Trading Page

Click the link above to open the stock trading page, you should see a page appear like the one below.

If you have no idea what to invest in first, you can always invest in what you know. Here are some questions to help you get started.

• Where do you shop for clothes or accessories?
• Where do you or your family shop for groceries or other household items?
• What are the brand names of products in your kitchen, bathroom or closet?

The more questions you ask like these, the more you realize how interconnected the stock market is with your day-to-day life. You could also look up the names of the production companies that make your favorite movies, video games, the apps you use the most, or anything else you can think of.

Symbol Lookup

Once you have a list of companies, it’s time to check what their ticker symbol is. Your teacher may have included the following lessons as part of your class assignments. The two lessons take about 10 minutes to complete altogether, and will give you a basic knowledge about stocks and ticker symbols.

Recommended Reading

• What is a Stock? (personalfinancelab.com)
• What is a Ticker Symbol? (personalfinancelab.com)

Whenever you’re ready, head over to the Symbol Lookup page. You can find it from under the “Investing Research” tab on the main menu. From this page, you can do a deep dive on the company’s financial situation, get a detailed stock quote, see company news and much more.

Start by typing the name of the company in the search box, in this example, Spotify. A list will appear below of all the relevant ticker symbols based on which exchange it’s listed in. You want to select the basic ticker symbol, in this case, SPOT.

If you want to learn more about stock exchanges, this 5 minute article goes over the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE). It will explain the basics of how a stock market works.

Recommended Reading

• What is the New York Stock Exchange? (personalfinancelab.com)

Using the Quotes Page

Once you’ve selected the ticker symbol from the dropdown menu, all the buttons in the left side panel will provide more information about that company. For instance, if you click “Analyst Rating” your screen will show you whether the company you selected is considered a good investment by financial professionals.

All the other buttons are equally useful to help inform your decision to invest in the company or not. You can see the company’s financial statements that were filed with the SEC, company news, price history, charting tools and more.

When you’re ready to place an order, click the “Trade” button beside the search bar, you will be taken back to the trading pit with the ticker symbol pre-selected for you.

How to Place a Trade

1. Exchange: By default, the U.S. Stock Exchange is selected from the North American region. You can choose another one by changing the region from the dropdown menu, (if your teacher has enabled international exchanges).
2. Action: Choose between Buy, Sell, Short and Cover. Your class may not have Shorting enabled, in that case you can choose either Buy or Sell as an action.
3. Symbol: Enter the ticker symbol you want to trade. If you don’t know the symbol, you can use the Symbol Lookup page. This is available from under the Investment Research tab on the main menu.
4. Quantity: The amount must always be whole numbers, you cannot enter a fraction or decimal.
5. Order Type: The default “Market Order” is pre-selected for you, and will execute immediately while the market is open at the current market price. If you want to place a trade at a specific price, you can use the other order types, (Limit Orders, Stop Orders, Trailing Stop $ or Trailing Stop %). To learn more about how to use the different options, watch our tutorial video, Order Types.
6. Charts: Use the simple or advanced charting feature to see the price fluctuations over time. Once you’ve entered the ticker symbol, additional company information will populate below the trading window. This will provide the same information that’s available on the Quotes page for that company.
7. Preview: When you are done entering the trading settings, click “Preview” to see the total cost with commission included. If you like the price, you’ll be prompted to enter a trading note and to click “confirm” to execute your order.

After you click “Preview” you will see an image like what you see above. Your class might have Trade Notes required, however, it’s a good habit to add a note anyway. This will help you remember why you placed each trade at the end of your class when it comes time to prepare any reports or assignments on your performance in the Stock Game.

Open Positions

You can review your current holdings at any time by going to the Open Positions page, available from under the Stock Game tab on the main menu. For more information about each holding, click the “+” button. Whenever you want to close out your position, you can click the “Trade” button and you’ll be taken back to the trading page.

Please note that the Market Value will say “delayed” for the first 15 minutes after a trade is placed. However, the trading simulation is still using real-time data for the US stock exchange while the market is open.

My Rankings

One of the most popular pages on the site is the My Rankings page, available from under the Stock Game tab on the main menu. This is where you can see how your portfolio is performing compared to other students in your class.

How to Play the Budget Game

You can access the Budget Game by clicking the “Play Budget Game” button on the Budget Game dropdown menu, or with this link Budget Game Page. From the Budget Game menu you will also be able to access your class rankings, your account statements and useful videos to help you get started. The slideshow above will walk you through the main features of the game and how to navigate through each month.

Tutorial Videos

My Statements

As you progress through the Budget Game, you’ll be able to access your checking account, saving account and credit card statements just like a real bank account. All statements can be exported to excel, which will be useful if ever your class has any projects on your cashflow or choices you made in the game.

This page is available from under the Budget Game tab on the main menu, or this handy link Budget Report.

My Assignments

There are many different places you can access your assignments, like from the Student Dashboard, the Open Positions page, and the Budget Game page.

You can see all your lessons from the “View Active Assignments” page under the Learning tab. From here you can see your grades and what you still have left to do.

When you click on “View” it will open the lesson. Each lesson includes videos, text and other interactive elements, like you can you can see below, “What is a Stock?”

Each lesson ends with a pop quiz that will provide you a grade when you click “Submit”.

Help Desk

If you need any assistance along the way, please use the “Contact Support” button that is available from all pages in the bottom right corner. During business hours, (9:30AM to 5:30PM EST) we have live chat, and outside these times you can send in a ticket and our team will answer you as soon as possible the following business day.