My take is fantasy investing at best teaches you what is a put option vs a call option, but don't confuse yourself with limited success in fantasy investing with true investing talent.

As online brokerages and other financial-services firms roll out new virtual-trading tools that promise to teach the ins and outs of complex investing strategies, some individual investors are finding the transition from fantasy trades to real-life investing isn't always a smooth one.

Indeed, investors' results in virtual accounts may be far different than their experience in the real market, since virtual programs often give investors unlimited sums of make-believe cash to trade with, encourage users to test their strategies with historical data that may not reflect current conditions and can't factor in the emotions that come in to play with real money.

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While virtual-trading programs don't involve real money, these tools can pose their own risks, industry experts say. Many people use the programs as a springboard to making real trades. And while companies that offer virtual trading say these programs accurately simulate market conditions, investors can still encounter potentially costly surprises when they leave the land of make-believe.

"Virtual trading is a very powerful tool for investors, but its one limitation is that it will never be able to simulate the emotions involved in trading with real money," says optionsXpress Chief Executive David Kalt. "For that reason, we encourage investors to use our virtual-trading service...to gain experience with the many tools we offer to manage risk and limit the impact of emotion."

Given the differences between virtual-trading platforms and real market conditions, though, some experts question just how educational the programs are. "If I were an investor I would be very careful about using a trading simulator" to measure the success of a trading strategy, says Christopher Musto, an analyst at Keynote Systems Inc., an online-performance-measurement firm.