The stock market can be a tricky and expensive game, but one app has found a way to fix that.
Essentially a fantasy sports app for stocks, Vestly allows players to choose their own portfolio, buy virtual stocks, and then rack up points based on the stocks’ performance.
Logging on to the platform is pretty much straightforward—via a required Facebook log-in—but picking stocks is a little bit trickier since there app has no curated selections or doesn’t provide extra information on how to create a portfolio. Instead, Vestly asks its players to enter either the stock symbol or the name of the company they would like to purchase virtual stock from.
At the end of every month, the top 100 portfolios will split $10,000 based on where they ranked, according to TechCrunch. Vestly also promises to roll out long-term, bigger prizes, such as an Audi Q3 Quattro, every six months.
The app is incubated by start-up Foundermark, which operates under a theory that “the chances of success are greater when users invest in companies that they use, know, and believe in.”
The data that Vestly accumulates could prove useful to financial institutions like hedge funds and e-trading platforms. In addition, Foundermark believes the data “helps identify various stocks that might be flying under the radar.
Vestly, which recently raised a $4 million seed round, joins other companies that are taking a punt on stock market watching. Early this year, Copenhagen-based start-up Fibetco created BetOnFinance, a first-of-its-kind gambling platform for stocks.
Much like Vestly, BetOnFinance players can punt on the companies that they think will be the day’s top performer, or who will make it to the top three. Players can also decide on the losing companies.
Stocks that can be wagered include Tesla, Netflix and biotech firm Gilead. However, companies like Berkshire Hathaway and Nike are not included because they’re too stable.
Jeff Saul, the man behind BetOnFinance, likened the platform to fantasy sports games, noting that betting on stocks is different from binary options because “there’s no correlation between winnings and the actual performance of the underlying stock.”
