I'm about 4+ hours into the stock simulation and I've traded 5 mystery stocks. I recommend it if you're looking for an opportunity to build your knowledge of trading, technical analysis, chart, entry & exit skills from scratch. It's also a fun time-filler if you enjoy trading.

What to expect? You trade candlestick charts of historical data of stocks listed on US. stock exchanges. The mystery stocks are revealed to you only after you've traded them for a period of time. You trade with virtual money and if you're good, you should be able to grow your net worth over time. You also grow your capital by learning about various stock market & trading related concepts such as Moving Averages, Margin Loans and so on. The game starts you up with a Margin Loan which you need to invest, safeguard and build, or you run the risk of a Margin Call that ends your campaign run. The deeper you get into the campaign, your capital and technical analysis tool kit expands to include moving averages, MACD, volume and so on. You'll also unlock ETFs and crypto.

I've been looking for a simulation like this one for a while now. I found this through another influential day trader who mentioned it on their newsletter. I do think it can help you sharpen your skills, thought-process and trading discipline a bit. This is where the game shines. However, it's training utility drops sharply if you've already passed a day-trader beginner stage. For instance, if you've been relying on an IRL day-trading setup (indicators, trade & risk management), don't expect to be able to extend that setup to this simulation. Here you start from scratch and have limited technical customisation abilities. Ofc this is absolutely fair and I'm only mentioning this because I'd hope this review would help clarify what to expect.

In a nutshell, the intended target audience for the simulation are beginners. It's still fun to struggle with spotting and profiting from market cycles, huge price breakouts, building your net worth over time only to have to deal with the very real emotions having it disintegrate when markets crash.

Edit: I'm yet to get to a few of the more advanced features, such as trading automation. I hope that at that point the value of the game for me personally will grow. It'd help if a slightly quicker path was available.

+50 hours in.

I never leave reviews, but I would feel like a thief not to leave one for Trade Bots after the content I got.

...and I still have not covered much, but I only restarted twice...short of being wiped out.

This is an excellent trading simulation - truly a great practice/learning tool.

As you progress, you get more tools and trading flexibility (going short, stop loss, trailing stop, etc.). If you don't know what these terms mean, don't worry it will guide you with sufficient information. Also, the tools provided are not "bubble gum tools" but reflect realistic indicators used in real trading context.

This is really a good simulator to learn about trading because it let's you control the pace. This is way better then paper trading platform offered by brokers (i.e. Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, etc.). Because you don't have you don't have to wait for the next day or week to see if your trade position worked or not and if you need to adjust. This quasi immediate feedback is key for understanding. It helps make sense of chart patterns, candlestick patterns, resistance area by allowing you to test your trading approach against real stock behaviour. It keeps you in the game in a much more direct way that day to day trading or swing trading (i.e. trading over longer period of time) would allow on a broker's platform.

Very importantly, it feels real enough (given it is based on real stocks) that you will be exposed to trading psychology. This in itself is key. If you loose your s***t here along with all your play money - Then you definitely need to hone your skills and your risk management.

If you loose it all. You start over. Fair enough - better than your real money.

I have been trading for a few years, nothing professional or anything like that, but am familiar with trading platform to recognise that Trade Bots hits in a area where few have been or are interested to go (when it comes to commercial trading platform).

Sure, there are few glitches and some improvement that could be done. But there is already way plenty on the table to learn a bunch. This being said, the guys are having regular updates, you can see they are interested in this game.

I hope down the road that there would be a place to add options trading - which is surely more complex, but this kind of environment would be ideal to learn to trade them.

Anyway, if you are interested in trading and honing your skills - I hope this helps tip the balance. I would recommend getting some additional content to test your trade strategies - anything basic on youtube can help (price action, chart patterns, etc.). Take some pieces and try to make sense out of the charts.

Cheers

First, the upside...

I came into this as a novice investor with a little experience looking to improve over all. I can honestly say that a single binge day of playing this was more enlightening to me as a trader than any YouTube video series as it connected all the dots I had learned on my own with all the other dots I didn't realize that I needed to learn. It made everything click into place while providing the safe yet hands on environment with real world information that one could really use to refine their knowledge base and strategy before going out into the wild. In that regard this simulator is practically a public service. Needless to say it is more than worth every penny to someone looking to improve as an investor and significantly less than the education one would require to get this much subject focused instruction in traditional academia.

Next, the trend reversal...

One must come into this simulator as they would a college course. It reminds me of getting my business degree so much I almost worry about my GPA from time to time playing it. However, if you are some sort of twisted geek such as I, who tends to watch multi-part hours long history documentaries from plucky Aussies on YouTube that would put everyone around you asleep, welcome home. This certainly isn't a casual trading sim. It is every bit as educational as it says and if that is what you are looking at it for then it is what you are looking for.

And now, the downside...

I'm just going to be forthcoming, it's crude. For me, on a system that ranks in the top 4% in the Steam hardware survey, the sim was clunky, laggy, and prone to frequent crashes late into very long charts. One was 50 years of Walmart, made bank but would have made so much more if "stop" actually stopped on time, even from the lowest sim speed, and during this total chart I experienced at least a half dozen crashes, each requiring the termination of multiple tasks in Task Manager, but I was bound and determined to find out what that mystery stock was which wound up being 50 years of Walmart. The problems were their worst during the last decade where, for a bit, I would see about one crash per year of the chart for a time. Fortunately, the sim persistently saves so I never lost progress.

Finally, the exit...

Like any good hammer or screw driver, it's a crude but effective tool. Those who approach it should be eager to learn. In my opinion, and being someone who has thoroughly explored an education in finance for this sort of thing, it is worth every bit of the $12. If you're looking for a trading game and not really looking to learn, look elsewhere. The Invisible Hand may be better suited to what you're looking for.

Considering this review starts on the upside, experiences a trend reversal, and exits on the downside, I suppose it comes up short.
Baddum tiss.

While fundamental analysis will always beat technical analysis, this is a decent sim for paper trading.

Real trading training tool. After all the trading toys I've seen on Steam, I'm surprised to see a high-quality, comprehensive tool to learn to trade in a comfortable way.

It's a bit boring at the start, since you're limited to just one chart of unknown stock, and maybe a moving average or two. But consider it a test of patience, a valuable quality for a trader. A bit later, if you are patient, you'll catch a big price move and be bombarded with new stuff :)

It teaches you universal rules of trading, and it will be a good foundation for further self-education.
And it will also be useful if you consider taking some further studies in this area to become an actual trader. ~7 years ago, I spent more money on a thing much less user-friendly than this game. Now there's TradingView, but the feature costs $12.95 per month, and the other options I just searched on web - I used some of them, but all I remember is headache - they either trial/subscription, or require an account on some broker which won't be your favorite one for reasons. So having something like that just on Steam without all this nonsense is a luxury.

It mostly focuses around indicators, and later using them in visual trading bot programming. I wouldn't expect more from a training thing.

There are neural networks, however. Traders are often very interested in these, so it's neat to have such a toy here. You'll never find it bundled in any 'usual' trading terminals.
But unfortunately, it won't work well. It's the same as if you get a bunch of indicators and optimize them blindly until they're profitable on history data, and maybe some out-of-sample data.
The reason it won't work is this: the neural network requires a stationary process, i.e. stochastic process, whose unconditional joint probability distribution does not change when shifted in time. Example is white noise chart. Obviously, no price chart or indicator is a stationary process.
But I can tease you a bit. A spread of statistical arbitrage basket/pair can have quasi-stationary distribution for some time, which can be tested at each time interval by the computationally simple method called the Augmented Dickey–Fuller test. I just don't have time to experiment further...

Technical part of the game is good: it's an Electron app. the interface is responsive, clean, looks professional, almost doesn't use GPU, and looking in the task manager, multi-threading is also a thing. And it's also on GitHub, perfection.
It's a big deal, because I've seen some ♥♥♥♥. Like a trading sim on Unreal Engine, or static banana picture on unity which eats up 5% of GPU without reason.

Pros: fun trading simulator. The "real stock data, but you don't get to know which stock or what year until after the run" is GREAT.

And of course you can unlock the date through upgrades if you so choose.

Cons: Because I chose to unlock date information, I will for the rest of my live know that I am in fact the kind of despicable monster that would short 9/11.

Just like the real stock market, the stock plummets as soon as I buy in. 10/10\

Note to Dev: some of your youtube embedded videos are no longer available. You need to make videos part of the game and not linked to a source you can't control...

A great educational tool with well structured/paced nuggets information.
A good way to get a feel for trading trends without losing any money. I've lost 2 runs before developing an understanding and strategy that produces consistent profits.

Cons:
- Can be buggy on Linux but playable 99% of the time.
- Interface feels clunky and isn't the slickest around.

I like it when the number goes up.

Highly recommended for anyone wanting to learn technical analysis and to sharpen their skills. This game makes it so fun and easy.