Simulate Your Investments

Investopedia.com, a multi-use site for trading and stock market research, has a simulator for building a portfolio of stocks. They give you $100,000 to start, and it's up to you to see how far you can take it. The trades aren't real-time, but they do occur within 20-30 minutes after you submit (during trading hours). They charge standard commission fees and you also accumulate interest in dividend-yielding stocks. The simulator has on average about 88,000 users. Each user is ranked based on portfolio performance - there is no prize but it is fun and a good way to get your feet wet in the market with fake money.

Credit goes to Wayne for telling me about this a few months ago. I am currently ranked at 20884, but have been as high as the 16000's. I'm working on some mods to my portfolio to get into the top 5000 - though I should be spending my time doing these things with real money.