Personal Finance Blog | FlipSide Invest

So some of you may think that you have what it takes to make it in the stock market. You think you can game the stock market to make tons of money. Let me guess you watched a few episodes of Mad Money and now you think you can take on the big bulls on wall street. Well let me tell you a few things you can not learn how to beat the stock market from watching a TV show. You can’t beat the stock market from reading investing for beginners . The only way you can beat the stock market is through practice through a stock investing game.

A few years ago NBC had a contest to see who was one of the top traders around. Thy gave you 1,000,000 million dollars to start and the person with the most cash at the end of the three month period would take home some money. Me and my buddy were pretty cocky at this point thinking “we went to college” “we took the right classes” “we know our shit.” Well let me tell you we both got owned. I ended up loosing money, and this is while the stock market was doing well.

Here is why I failed:

1. Overconfidence in my knowledge
2. Did not treat the money as if it was real money
3. Time limit made me take risks I never would have in real life

Since then I have strayed away from the stock market. I think at this point I have enough assets and its time to venture again, especially since there are so many great deals due to the “recession hype.” I am going to join the a free online stock market game to practice my new knowledge before I start using real money. Play to Win $50,000 - Fantasy Stock Trading Game