The idea behind this project is to teach students directly about the stock market by setting up an "investment" with fake money. Each student or team gets a set amount, usually around $100,000, to invest in a set number of companies. Over a predetermined length of time, these students track their portfolios and determine whether they made or lost money. Usually, this project takes place over the course of several months. If the educator wants, he can allow for the buying and selling of stock throughout or force the students to stick with their original companies.
This project revolves around tracing the stock prices over the course of the exchanges' history and following overall trends. Aside from simply graphing the historical trends, the project also involves providing explanations for bubbles and bursts, including the economic, political and catastrophic. As an interesting addition, the educator can have the students make predictions about where the stock market will be on the day of their graduation (or some other important day) and then compare the actual stock market to their predictions.
This project revolves around putting the students in a historically turbulent time for the stock market, such as the Great Depression, the housing bubble or the Texas bonds scandal, and have the students react to it. Since the majority of students are not familiar with the details of these events, it is usually best to approach this without telling them that they are recreating historic events. Rather, simply provide them with the news and stock indexes of that day as much as possible without giving away the twist. Once the event happens and the market reacts, help the students recover their portfolios.