A friend invited me to a fantasy investing league that he's running through MarketWatch's "Virtual Stock Exchange". It's a good time, but don't expect any lessons learned. This is tantamount to 10 months of daily gambling.

Which is all the more ironic, because at the same time I'm finally reading Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" which rails page after page against such idiocies - with real money that is.

And what a feeling it is to have $100K in cold hard (fake) cash to take to the whims of the market. First two trades? Short sell GLD and a FL/AZ REIT that has run up like crazy. I got the first one nominally right so far. After that I ran up about $80K in margin debt in one day! Gotta love it. After taunting my friend (who started this thing) about my 2% gains over 2 days to his -2%, he comes back with the old, "It's a marathon, not a sprint."... yeah right, sucker.

Of course, he's right on - when you play with your real money. I would never do any of this crazy stuff, but I guess that's the point. Maybe there is something to games that allow you to play while being safe on the side. Even Graham says you can put up to 10% of your money in your play account. What if play were entirely separated into fantasy accounts? We might all be a lot richer because it's not really the gains that we seek, it's the thrill of the chase - the roll of the dice - the *chance* that *someone* wins...

Interesting stuff all around, I highly recommend it. Unlike fantasy sports, you might actually learn something too.mortgage calculator