Virtual Trading – Product Specs
Last Updated December 30, 2020 – Subject To Change
Stock-Trak’s Virtual Trading Platform has dozens of configurable settings available for all classes, contests, and sessions. This is an overview of the settings available for configuration, with their descriptions and default settings.
| Setting | Default | Description |
| Service Level | 18 Weeks, 400 trades | “Service Level” determines the maximum trading session length and number of trades allowed per user – which in turn determines pricing. Institutions with a Site License or customized platform have no service level restrictions. |
| Session Name | Every administrator can set a custom trading session name and description, which will appear on your custom registration page. | |
| Payment Method | Students | Stock-Trak’s registration fees can be paid by the student at the time of registration by credit card, or by invoicing the university. |
| Registration Dates | You can set a custom registration window for your class or trading session. For classes, the registration window is usually kept open for most of the class duration. For corporate events with prizes, the registration window typically closes shortly after trading begins. | |
| Trading Dates | This is the window where the Stock-Trak portfolios are active. Users can access the system to view tutorials and learning materials before this date, but not trade. After this date, portfolios are “frozen”, so users can log in to review the final standings, but not place additional trades. | |
| Time Zone | US Eastern Time | You can configure the time zone of your trading session to match your local time. This impacts the registration/trading dates, as well as the timestamps on trades. |
| Forums | Yes | Stock-Trak has basic forum functionality built in to allow your students or users to post and respond to messages. This can be enabled or disabled per class/session. |
| Currency of Portfolio | US Dollars | You can set the currency of your session from any one of 30+ major global currencies. Trading uses the real-time FX rates across currencies and exchanges. |
| Weekly Deposits | None | You can optionally have additional cash deposited into your participant’s portfolios every week. This setting is typically used in personal finance classes to mimic regular contributions to a retirement portfolio. |
| Initial Cash Balance | 1,000,000 | This is the amount of cash available to each of your participants when they register. This is denominated in whatever currency you have chosen. |
| Minimum Prices | $3 | You can set a minimum price for buying and shorting – this is typically used to discourage penny stock trading |
| Interest Earned On Cash | 3% | The Stock-Trak platform can pay interest on the un-invested cash of your participants (as if it were invested in a Money Market account). This can also be set to a negative number – penalizing participants who are not fully-invested. |
| Interest Charged On Loan | 8% | If you allow your participants to trade on margin, we will also charge interest on their loan balances. |
| Display Sharpe Ratio Rankings | No | In addition to overall portfolio performance, you can also include rankings by Sharpe Ratio. We begin calculating the Sharpe Ratio for portfolios 5 days after they make their first trade, and we use the Interest Earned on Cash as the risk-free rate for the calculation. |
| Allow Trading on Margin | Yes | This determines if your participants can borrow money. Margin trading is automatic after users invest all of their additional cash. Giving participants $1 million with margin trading will give $2 million in buying power. |
| Pre-Populated Starting Portfolio | No | Instead of giving all participants a lump-sum of cash, you can instead set the system to have participants start with a pre-built portfolio. |
| Allow Short Selling | Yes | This allows users to short sell. Disable this to allow only buy/sell transactions. |
| Allow Day Trading | Yes | This allows users to buy and sell the same stock in the same day. |
| Make All Portfolios Public | No | If this is enabled, every participant can see the open positions and transactions from every other participant from the Rankings page. As the administrator, you will always have access to this information from your reports. |
| Your Account In The Rankings | Yes | This determines if you want your administrator account to appear in the main rankings page. Disable this if you do not intend to trade yourself. |
| Require Trading Notes | Yes | This setting will require all participants to write a short “Trading Note” explaining their investing rationale before the system will accept their trades. |
| Fill Orders On Daily Volume | 200% | This setting limits trading to securities actually trading in the real world by checking the “volume”. You can set this to limit trading of your participants to only liquid securities. For example, if a stock has a current volume of 50, a “200%” setting will allow your users to purchase up to 100 shares. Higher quantities will not execute. |
| Limit Trades Per Day | No | You can also place daily trade restrictions on your users to encourage long-term thinking |
| Display Badges | Yes | Stock-Trak has a built-in gamification engine, where participants can earn badges by completing tutorials and lessons or completing certain types of trades. Badges can be displayed on the rankings page, or disabled for your session. |
| Certificates | No | Stock-Trak also has Financial Literacy and Investing 101 certificates of completion available. If enabled, your participants will be prompted to complete our Personal Finance and/or Investing curriculum, and take certain actions in their virtual portfolio to earn their Certificate. |
| Allowed Securities | Equities, Mutual Funds, Bonds | Stock-Trak supports trading of international equities, mutual funds, corporate and treasury bonds, options, futures, future options, forex, and cash spots trading. You can enable or disable the security types you want to include in your session. |
| Equities Sub-Types | US stocks and ETFs | Within equities, you can enable or disable stocks, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and international stocks from over 30 countries. Note that US equities trade at real-time bid/ask prices, while international equities varyingly trade at delayed or end-of-day prices, depending on the exchange. |
| Customized Exchanges | No | You can also optionally create “custom” exchanges – replacing the symbol input when trading with a set drop-down list of securities. This is frequently used to limit trading to just the S&P 500 or Dow 30 stocks, or to highlight specific regional companies in specialty challenges. |
| Commission Structure | $10 Per Trade | Administrators can independently set the commission structure (per trade, per share/contract, or % of the order amount) for each security type |
| Position Limit | 25% | The “Position Limit” is used to enforce diversification – this is a restriction on how much of a user’s portfolio can be invested in any 1 security. For example, with a 25% position limit, users will need at least 4 securities to spend their entire starting cash. |
| Diversification | 100% | Diversification rules enforce diversification across security types. A typical usage would be to impose a 75% limit on Equities – participants would need to use their remaining 25% on mutual funds or bonds. |
Additional settings and customizations are available for institutions with a Stock-Trak Site License or Branded Platform.