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How to Play

Six steps. Zero real money. Infinite ways to lose.

01

Pick your starting capital

Choose how much fake money you want to risk. $10K for the cautious. $1B for the delusional. It all feels the same when the market tanks.

02

Choose a scenario

Six historical periods. Each one a different flavor of chaos — or euphoria. The 2008 Financial Crisis, the dot-com wipeout, Black Monday 1987, COVID crash, 2021 crypto mania, and the 2022 crypto winter.

03

Build your portfolio

Search from 22 real instruments: stocks, ETFs, crypto, gold, bonds. Set your allocation percentages. They sum to 100% — MoneyBags will remind you if you try to cheat.

04

Set trading rules (optional)

Automate your strategy. Rules trigger based on price changes, portfolio value, position weights, and more. Example: "If SPY drops 5% in a day, sell 20% of my AAPL." Rules fire automatically during playback.

05

Run the simulation

Watch the market play out tick by tick. Hit play, set your speed (1x, 5x, 10x), and make manual trades whenever you panic. The simulation ends when the historical period is over.

06

See how badly you did

The results screen shows your final portfolio value, Sharpe ratio, max drawdown, beta, volatility, and your best and worst day. Then it adds your run to the leaderboard so you can compare.

Example trading rules

Rules are optional but powerful. Here are a few to get you started.

IF

Portfolio drops more than 10% in a day

THEN

Move 50% of everything to cash

IF

BTC position weight exceeds 40%

THEN

Sell 20% of BTC

IF

SPY (market) gains more than 3% in a day

THEN

Buy $5,000 of QQQ

IF

Cash balance exceeds $50,000

THEN

Buy $10,000 of GLD

What the numbers mean

Sharpe Ratio

Risk-adjusted return. Above 1.0 is good. Above 2.0 means you probably got lucky. Negative means you should have put it all in a savings account.

Max Drawdown

The worst peak-to-trough decline your portfolio experienced. This is the number that would have made you sell everything at exactly the wrong time.

Annualized Volatility

How much your portfolio swung around day to day, scaled to a yearly number. Higher = wilder ride.

Beta vs S&P 500

How much your portfolio moved relative to the market. Beta of 1 = moves with the market. Beta of 2 = twice as dramatic. Beta of 0 = didn't care.

Start Simulating →

No sign-up. No real money. No excuses.