What is virtual trading, and why on earth would you want to spend your time playing on a stock market game? Let me explain why you should take this sort of game very seriously indeed.

If you want to make money on the stock markets then you basically have three choices. Your first choice is to hand your money over to a stockbroker, letting them make money for you. Or you could dive in and do it yourself, or you could start out by trying your hand at virtual trading by using a stock market game. Let's just analyze the reality of those three options.

Your first option of hiring a stockbroker to invest your money for you is a safe bet. But with safety comes mediocrity. Because your stockbroker is going to take a cut of your profits, and they'll want this cut to be fairly predictable and safe, which means they'll be playing those stocks which only tend to return fairly modest profits. Then they take their cut from those modest profits and hand you a sum of money that's pretty devoid of anything to write home about. That's if you can afford the stamp.

Your second option is to dive right in and do it yourself. This, however, is fraught with problems. It's a bit of a catch 22 situation because in order to play the stock markets well you need a great deal of practical experience in trading stocks, but to get that experience without becoming bankrupt you need a great deal of experience in trading stocks. See what I mean?

So your third option is really the only one to consider seriously if you're looking at ultimately making sound investments, trading expertly and safeguarding healthy profits. It's important to be aware that in almost every single example of a decent stock market game you are actually playing the real stock market. In fact everything is real, including the interface, the data, the rises and falls of stocks and shares. The only thing which isn't real is your money.

Once you open a virtual trading account you're given a sum of virtual money which you can then use in exactly the same way as investors and stockbrokers do every day. And don't imagine for a moment that it will feel like a game! Most people find that they very quickly become hopelessly caught up in the heat of the moment, the thrill of the chase and the excitement of online trading that they completely forget that their gains are virtual.

Fortunately of course, their losses are virtual too, and believe me, there will be losses. No amount of book reading or theoretical knowledge can ever fully prepare you for playing the stock market for real. So if you're serious about trading, and you don't have a bottomless pit of money which you're prepared to lose, then by all means bone up on the theory, but get yourself a virtual trading account, sign up for a stock market game, and I can assure you that you will find out very quickly why it's the best of your three options, and the only way to gain the experience you need in order to start playing the stock market for real.