Learn to invest with real companies, real risk, and none of the real money.

Free for schools — sign in with your school to start. Personal accounts are a small paid membership.

16real assets
$1,000to start
$0real money at risk
Freefor schools

See it in action

A real trading screen, not a slideshow

Buy and sell sixteen real assets, watch fees and dividends land, and track your run against a simple buy-and-hold benchmark the whole way.

Market Lab's in-game dashboard: portfolio value, a savings goal progress bar, cash/fees tiles, a chart comparing the student's trades against a buy-and-hold benchmark, the economy panel, and the asset allocation bar.

Our purpose

The Mission

The model

How it works

Every run plays out a made-up decade of prices for sixteen real assets — NZ companies, index funds, US stocks, crypto and bonds. Nothing is replayed from history; each price path is generated fresh, month by month, so no two runs (and no two students) see the same market.

Two numbers, on purpose

Every asset carries a past return (roughly what the real thing has actually returned) and an expected return the simulation actually uses, which is pulled back toward an ordinary share-like return. If the game rewarded whatever won last decade, it would teach exactly the wrong lesson. What stays different between assets is risk, not the promise of a repeat performance.

A random walk, not a coin flip

Prices move using geometric Brownian motion — a small random step every month, compounding over the decade. Each asset's step is split between a world-market factor, a New-Zealand factor, and its own noise, which is why an NZX company and an Auckland-listed fund move together more than an NZX company and a US tech stock do.

A real economic cycle

The market moves through expansion, overheating, recession and recovery, each with its own effect on drift, volatility and how much everything starts moving together. Diversification failing exactly when it's needed most — in a recession — is one of the truest things about real markets, and it's built in on purpose.

Fees and dividends, not just prices

Every trade costs a flat fee plus a percentage of the trade, the same shape a real brokerage charges. Some assets pay dividends along the way. Both show up in your results at the end, so "what did fees actually cost me" has a real answer, not a guess.

Play for real

Competition

Time-bound competitions run in seasons, each with its own prize. Students sign in through their school, play a run, and their best result counts toward national, school, city and year-group leaderboards for that season. A practice run with no competition selected never touches a leaderboard at all.

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Real companies. Real trade-offs. Your call.
Start · Year 0
Portfolio value
$1,000
—
$1,000
Earns 3.0% a year
$1,000
$50 added monthly
$1,000
Inflation 0.0%
$0.00
0 trades

You against doing nothing

The other line buys the world fund on day one and never trades again
Your portfolio

Set up a new run

Everyone using the same seed gets the same market

Advance time

120 months to go

The economy

—

    Where your money is

    Headlines

    • Nothing has happened yet.

    The market

    Real companies, simulated prices · NZD ·
    Asset Price 1 month History You hold Trade

    The first number is roughly what the real thing returned in the past. The second is what this simulation expects from here — and it is deliberately much lower for the past winners. , and it is the most useful thing on this page.

    What this is teaching you

    Tap any underlined word anywhere in the app for a plain-English explanation

    Nvidia returned about 33% a year for twenty years. This simulation expects roughly 9% from it. That is not pessimism — a price already reflects how good everyone knows the company is.

    Ethereum can move 85% in a year. It is not expected to return more than shares over time — you are taking on far more risk for the same expected reward.

    Money left alone grows on its own growth. Ten years of an ordinary return usually beats a few brilliant trades, which is why the benchmark line is so hard to beat.

    Fisher & Paykel, Mainfreight, Meridian and a2 Milk all ride the same NZ economy. One NZ fund plus one world fund is duller and genuinely safer.

    A $3 flat fee on a $50 trade is 6% gone before you own anything. The same fee on a $5,000 trade is 0.06%. Trade small and often and the fees quietly take your returns.

    You will be in it from your first payslip for about 45 years. The fund you pick is the biggest money decision you will ever make, and most people never make it.