I want TO HAVE bought stock!

April 19, 2009 12:14 PM

Is there a stock market simulator that would let me "buy" stock at an arbitrary in the past and watch how that purchase would have affected my portfolio?

I'm impatient to test my hand with the market--I want to start trading as soon as an impending cash windfall arrives. Obviously, however, I don't want to trade foolishly. I've set up a simulator account, but that won't "kick in" until the market opens tomorrow. Is there any way I can run simulations all day today using some "historical" simulator? As in "Buy 1 share of Caterpillar," but set the calendar to March 2, for instance?

posted by jefficator to Work & Money (4 answers total)

Everyone and their dad used to have this online a decade ago, I even made one. Have you looked at something like "my portfolio" on finance.yahoo.com?
posted by RustyBrooks at 1:30 PM on April 19, 2009

I just looked at "my portfolio" on yahoo and it allows you to manually enter in the purchase price and the date purchased. Seems crazy that it the price isn't set automatically.
posted by kamelhoecker at 2:25 PM on April 19, 2009

I use finance.google.com

Also, while not exactly what you're looking for, caps.fool.com is a great game+tool.
posted by Sonic_Molson at 7:48 PM on April 19, 2009

If you have Mathematica, it's well suited to playing with a lot of "what-if" style finance questions. Caterpillar prices since 2 March:

In[2]:= FinancialData["CAT", "2 April"]

Out[2]= {{{2009, 4, 2}, 31.14}, {{2009, 4, 3}, 31.74}, {{2009, 4, 6},
30.91}, {{2009, 4, 7}, 29.08}, {{2009, 4, 8}, 29.19}, {{2009, 4, 9},
32.11}, {{2009, 4, 13}, 32.74}, {{2009, 4, 14},
32.28}, {{2009, 4, 15}, 32.6}, {{2009, 4, 16},
32.71}, {{2009, 4, 17}, 32.29}}

It can be fun to test your own buying/selling strategy, and (usually) see how it would not make a statistically significant profit.
posted by hAndrew at 11:35 PM on April 19, 2009