Stock Trading Games - boon or bane?

On the day of the last session before Diwali vacations, ICICI Securities came at our Institute of Management, Nirma University to invite us to play Stock Mind, their stock trading game. Even the Placement Committee got so bullish that they took to their ego and made mandatory for everybody to listen to their harangue. The people from ICICI Securities painted rosy picture about stock markets and talked about wealth creation. They took great pain to explain the way inflation ate returns from fixed assets or any other asset class for that matter. I am sure they were able to catch the fancy of most of the lot listening to them.

Most of us would be playing the game by now. And they would definitely be enjoying playing Rs.1,500,000 of virtual money. I am sure some people would have success in terms of making profits while others would be making losses. I hope people having success aren't carried away by their lady luck. And those who are losing might have felt by now that its a pure gambling game. There is no logic involved in it apart from chance, sheer luck. Those having success can boast about having better degree of intuition or God's gift or sixth sense or whatever you name it. There are still days to go into this game and we will all see about that precious gift unfolding.

The point being made here is that one must not be carried by being successful in such trading games. If it would have been a real hard-earned Rs. 1,500,000 in your hands, would one have played such a gamble? Stock markets are about valuations. Those are valuations that go green or red on the marketwatch of your trading terminal. And valuations are reflections of the efficiency of a business. They are not slave to somebody's imagination or intuition. There might be temporary variations. And traders generally try to make hay during this period. But when it corrects, its bad for those uninformed herd-followers. 

We must never forget the 2008 financial apocalypse. It happened because of this particular nonsense intuition where people kept on taking unnecessary risks to the tip of the iceberg. And then, we know about the aftermath, the great floods, the deluge. Economies haven't recovered since then.

Lesson- Intuition is illogical and bereft of any basis. I hope people discover it here in this game, rather than burning their hands out their in actual merciless world.