Investing · MI Brokerage Simulator
MI Brokerage Simulator
A brokerage account simulator for students: they open a practice brokerage account the way a real one opens, transfer money in, place buy and sell orders that preview before they confirm, collect dividends, and read a quarterly statement. Most investing activities hand students an account that already exists — here the account is the lesson.
What It Is
The account the buying happens inside
Almost every classroom investing activity starts the student off with an account that is already open and already full of money. That skips the part most adults actually find confusing. In this brokerage account simulator the student starts with $1,200 in a practice bank and nothing else — no account yet, no money in it, nothing bought.
- Open the account. An application, an investor profile, and disclosures to read before anything can be traded — the same order a real firm uses, and each question explains why a firm is allowed to ask it.
- Move money in, and discover that is not investing. A transfer from the practice bank arrives as cash sitting in the account. Nothing has been bought. Students see the practice bank, the uninvested cash and the invested total as three separate numbers throughout.
- Look something up before buying it. Eight things to choose from — index, sector, international, bond and money-market funds, plus three individual companies — each with a detail page. Researching before you buy is one of the scored behaviors.
- Place an order that previews first. Buy or sell, in dollars or in shares, at the market price or with a limit. The ticket shows exactly what would happen — shares, cost, commission, the cash left afterwards — and nothing moves until it is confirmed.
- Get paid, and choose what happens to it. Dividends and interest arrive on their own schedule. The student decides whether income is taken as cash or reinvested, and the ledger shows the fractional shares a reinvestment actually bought.
- Read the statement, then take money back out. Two quarterly statements reconcile the account from its starting value to its ending value, line by line, and a withdrawal moves money back to the practice bank.
For Teachers
Teaching this in class? Use the complete companion lesson
Understanding Brokerage Accounts: How Investing Actually Works — a classroom-ready lesson built around this simulator for grades 9–12 and adult education. It frames the account before students open one, guarantees the few concepts a student could otherwise finish without meeting, and turns the run into a debrief and a short independent check.
Teacher lesson plan, student guide, exit ticket, teacher answer & debrief guide and an editable slide deck.
Lesson materials are free with a free Money Instructor account. A full Money Instructor membership is required for teachers to assign the simulator itself.
Inside the Simulator
What students see — and what you review
Real screens from the MI Brokerage Simulator. Every amount is fictional practice money — there is no real brokerage, no market data feed and no real account, and nothing here touches your class’s MI Bank balances. Tap any screenshot to open it full size.
For students — the order ticket, before it is confirmed
“This is what would happen. Your account has not changed.” The preview is a separate step from the order, on purpose — and whether a student previewed before confirming is one of the things the score reads.
For students — the quarterly statement
Every figure is worked out from the student’s own account records rather than stored, so the statement and the ledger can never disagree. The last two tiles are the lesson: what you locked in by selling is not the same as what you would get if you sold today.
For students — the investor profile
The questions a brokerage really asks, each one explaining why it is allowed to ask — and a plain statement that a real firm would want income and a Social Security number, that this one asks for none of it, and that students should never type real personal or financial details into a classroom activity.
For students — every movement, in one ledger
A dividend, and directly above it the reinvestment that spent it. This is the page that answers “where did that money come from?” without a teacher having to reconstruct it — every row carries the cash balance it produced.
For teachers — the class results
Who has started, who has finished, and what the class actually did. The class summary averages each part of the score so the lowest one is the lesson worth reteaching, and you can open any student’s account to read their orders, their statements and their written reflections. The roster is listed by name — there is no ranking.
How It Runs
Fourteen steps, in three plain phases
The run is guided from beginning to end, so no student has to guess what comes next, and it covers six simulated months of an authored market — the same six months, in the same order, for every student in the class.
Open it
- What a brokerage account is
- The account application
- The investor profile
- Disclosures to read
Nothing can be traded until the account exists — which is the point of doing it in this order.
Use it
- Transfer money in
- Research what is on offer
- Place orders, with a preview
- Review the portfolio
- Run six months of market
Prices move, dividends and interest arrive, and the student can trade again in any month.
Read it back
- Two quarterly statements
- Withdraw to the practice bank
- The results report
- Five written reflections
- Finish
A statement a student can reconcile is the difference between owning an account and being handed one.
The Difference
Why this brokerage simulator is not a stock-picking contest
An investing activity that ranks a class by ending balance teaches one lesson very efficiently: take the biggest swing you can, because the winner is whoever got lucky. Real investing rewards the opposite behavior, so this simulator scores the behavior instead.
The Investing Skills Score is built from seven things a student did — whether the mix matched the goal they stated, whether the money was spread out, whether they avoided an oversized bet on one company, whether they looked something up before buying it, whether they previewed their orders, what they did when prices fell, and how much of the money they actually put to work. Portfolio performance itself never affects the score. A student who bets everything on one company and gets lucky can finish with more money and a markedly lower score, and the report says so in plain language.
Every student plays the same six authored months, so the ending totals differ by what each student bought rather than by who drew a better market. There is no leaderboard, no rank column and no way to sort the class by result.
Every balance is fictional practice money. There is no brokerage, no real account, no real money, and nothing on this page or in the simulator is investment advice.
Which One Do I Assign?
The three investing tools, and what each one adds
Money Instructor Classroom has three investing activities. They are a ladder, and each rung hands the student more of a real account. All three run on a simplified, made-up market and teach long-term behavior, not stock picking.
Beginner Investing Challenge
The shortest.
- Choose a ready-made portfolio
- Ten years, five market rounds
- Grows a pretend $500
- Grades 6–12
MI Investing Simulator
The middle one.
- You choose what to buy
- Five years you actively manage
- Starts with a $1,000 practice wallet
- Grades 6–12
MI Brokerage Simulator You are here
The most detailed.
- Open the account itself
- Six months, two quarterly statements
- Transfers in from a $1,200 practice bank
- Grades 9–12
The Challenge hands the student a portfolio, the MI Investing Simulator has them build one, and the MI Brokerage Simulator is the account the buying happens inside. Most classes will use more than one, in that order. Both the MI Investing Simulator and the MI Brokerage Simulator score students on the decisions they made and never on how much money they ended up with.
Learning Objectives
What students practice
- Describe what a brokerage account is, and what has to happen before it can be used.
- Explain why a firm asks about goals, time horizon and experience before allowing a trade.
- Tell the difference between money transferred into an account and money that is invested.
- Read an order ticket, and say what a preview shows that a confirmation cannot undo.
- Compare a market order with a limit order, and say what each one gives up.
- Explain where dividends and interest come from, and what reinvesting them does to a holding.
- Reconcile a quarterly statement from its starting value to its ending value.
- Distinguish a gain locked in by selling from a gain that only exists on a screen.
- Judge an investing outcome by the decisions behind it rather than by the final number.
Teacher Q&A
Common questions about this brokerage account simulator
What is the MI Brokerage Simulator?
It is a practice brokerage account students open and operate inside Money Instructor Classroom. They complete an application, an investor profile and disclosures, transfer practice money in from a practice bank, research a menu of funds and companies, place buy and sell orders that preview before they confirm, collect dividends and interest, read two quarterly statements, take money back out, and finish with a behavior-based Investing Skills Score and five written reflections.
Is any of this real money, or a real brokerage?
No. Every amount is fictional practice money on the student’s own simulator record. There is no brokerage connection, no market data feed and no real account. The market is authored and deterministic — the same six months for every student — which is what lets a class be debriefed on decisions rather than on who drew a better month. Nothing in the simulator is investment advice.
Does it ask students for real personal or financial information?
No, and it says so on screen. A real firm asks for income, employment and a Social Security number; this one asks for none of that. The profile asks only what the practice money is for, how far away the student needs it, how much investing they have done before and how they feel about risk — and the page tells students plainly never to type real personal or financial details into a classroom activity.
Does it touch MI Bank or my classroom economy?
No. Funding comes from a built-in practice bank that belongs to the simulator, so nothing a student does here changes a class bank balance, a class fund or anything in your classroom economy. It works for any class, including a plain bank-only class with no economy set up.
How long does it take, and what do students need?
It is the longest of the three investing activities — fourteen guided steps across six simulated months, with two statements to read — so plan on a full class period. Students can leave and come back at any point: the simulator resumes exactly where they stopped, and it keeps resuming even after you close the assignment. They join with a class code, and no student email addresses are required.
Can I see what each student actually did?
Yes. The class results view shows who has started and finished and what the class did on average, with each part of the Investing Skills Score averaged so the weakest one is obvious. You can open any student to read their orders, their holdings, their statements and their written reflections, and the whole class can be exported. The roster is listed by name — there is no ranking and no way to sort students by result.
What do I need to run it?
A Money Instructor full membership and a class in Money Instructor Classroom. Sign in as a teacher, open the MI Brokerage Simulator, and assign it to a class in a few clicks. It runs in a browser on the devices schools already have, with nothing to install.
Ready to run it with your class?
The MI Brokerage Simulator is included with a Money Instructor full membership, along with lesson plans, worksheets, curriculum units and every other classroom simulation — investing, saving, budgeting, banking and credit.