Every Monday (or later if holiday/vacation) my plan is to update players of the MakeYouGoHmm Virtual Stock Exchange game some of us are playing. If you’d like to join and play click here, it’s free and doesnt’ take much time, you can register at any time. Players can view the ranking at any time by clicking on the link that says “Players & Rank”

gotpong.com is currently leading the pack with a 3.38% return and $103,383.61, followed by Soren Hoeger-Lerdal and DavisFreeberg. gotpong is splitting the portfolio between LOW, EICU and STP with around $17,000 cash still available to spend. All players can view the portfolios of others so this might be a way for those who aren’t that familiar with the stock market to choose some good performing stocks. There is no guarantee of course that if a stock is doing good for one player that when you buy — at a higher rate, most likely — that you’ll do as well. Conversely, you could look at the stocks not doing well and buy those at a lower rate and hope that these increase.

Readers might note that I’m not doing so well so far with an overall return of -1.31%. If you want to have a chance to prove you are superior against me in picking stocks between now and the end of the year, here’s your chance.

How to play
Once registered, just select some US stocks to buy by clicking on the “Make A Trade” link along the left column. If for some reason you can’t find the MakeYouGoHmm game to join then enter into the “find a game” to play spot case sensitively: MakeYouGoHmm and then you should see your name among the group.

You can pick stocks to trade after market hours but they won’t be processed until the market actually opens which is 9:30am-4pm EST. Virtual trades are delayed 20 minutes.

Prizes
So far we have two prizes. One is a cash prize — $100 USD — which will be awarded in January 2007 to the person with the highest overall account value (who we will declare the 2006 MakeYouGoHmm Virtual Tycoon) as of 12:01am PST January 1, 2007. The money will be sent via PayPal, so if you don’t have a PayPal account and if you are the 2006 MakeYouGoHmm Virtual Tycoon you will need to establish one.

The second prize was offered by Nathan Weinberg at Inside Google. It will be, according to him: “Count me in for one movie/TV DVD box to be named later, possibly letting the winner choose from a list, and possibly more (including books) if the pile is big enough.”

Have you got what it takes?
Get your significant other, boss, friends, blog readers and those around the office involved. Let’s crank this game up and overflowing with players so it is even more challenging. Who are the stock gurus are in our midst?

Good luck this week to all players.

• Play virtual $100,000 stocks game and win $100 USD from Hmm
• MakeYouGoHmm Virtual Stock Exchange Week #3: 210 days left
• 2006 Hmm Virtual Stock Exchange: 77 days left
• Locking up a Tycoon-themed game
• MakeYouGoHmm Virtual Stock Exchange Week #2: 216 days left
• MakeYouGoHmm Virtual Stock Exchange Week #6: 189 days left