Online Trading and Investment Simulator

Faculty Author:  Marshall E. Blume

Students buy and sell equities, options, and future contracts using real data from today's market

OTIS mirrors the sophisticated interface of many commercial trading applications used in the market today. It is completely web-based; there is no software to load. It includes screens for trade history, positions (showing current or historical holdings), book value, current market value, trading, news, and context-sensitive help.

Wharton Learning Lab Online Trading Investment Simulator

The screens have distinct functions as follows:

  • Trade — Allows students to enter individual trades, view their current open orders, or, for North American Equities only, upload batches of trades from a spreadsheet.
  • Positions — Shows students their current or historical holdings in each of the securities. It also gives current book and market values.
  • History — Gives the history of every transaction made in the portfolio. The students can also drill down to get detail data on any transaction.
  • Sectors — Allows students to manage their sector groupings. Students can group companies into any number of sectors and then change the assignments through the semester.
  • Analytics — Allows students to analyze the performance of their portfolio. The analytics section has a drop-down menu that lists a wide variety of data sets and analysis reports on portfolio performance. Available reports include Gain/Loss, Sharpe Ratio, Sector Return, and Portfolio Value and Holdings Change. In addition, all data is downloadable for further analysis.
  • Performance — Here, students can assess their performance throughout the semester and compare their own portfolios with those of their peers and, if they have selected one, with a benchmark portfolio.

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