What is StockRivals

StockRivals is a small Web App where friends compete by trading stocks with virtual money. One person creates a lobby. Configurations like starting money, game duration (24h, 3d, 1w), public/private can be made. In the game lobby the player gets an invite link to share with friends. There is no signup. You and your friends choose your usernames and 4-digit passcodes.

In the game you can buy and sell selected stocks. The portfolio of every player is update live and visible in the leaderboard.

The goal: Outperform your friends and grow the largest portfolio.

Why I built it

The are social betting apps against your friends for example for soccer. I always found them fun. Not because of soccer as a sport. But I liked the feeling to compete with your friends in that way.

I want StockRivals to be like those social sport betting apps but for stocks.

It may help people grow an interest in the stock market while having fun and maybe someone will even learn something.

Constraints

I decided against having user accounts. I generally hate it when I want to try something and then get asked out on a bunch of personal information :/ So you don't need to enter any personal information on StockRivals.

I also decided against having real money involved. This should be primarily for having fun and people should be experimenting.

To keep the app simple for now I added a limited stock universe. I selected some major US stocks that can be traded. So there are no hype-stocks currently available.

Current State

I published StockRivals 5 days ago. So far the app has everything it necessarily needs. I held the game lean so far. I don't want to get into any specific direction without real user feedback.

If you want to give some feedback try StockRivals.

What's next?

Currently I am investing my time into improving the general experience playing the game. I am working on minor UX changes to get the best out of it.

I got many many ideas for the future but I don't want to run in any direction without feedback. I want to design the game after the players needs and interests.

One of the ideas I got for the future would be to select between predefined stock universes or create a custom stock universe when creating a lobby.

I could work on adding graphs, indicators and other statistics but that might be confusing for some players that are new to stocks.

I will write notes as the development of StockRivals evolves.