Everything about how Journey Shares works, in short answers.
Journey Shares is a free stock-market game where you trade play-money shares in people's life journeys: public figures such as streamers, athletes, musicians, politicians and creators. That's where the name comes from. If you believe in where someone is headed, invest early and sell later if their price goes up.
No. Everything uses play money with no cash value. New players get $10,000 in play money to start, and active players get daily pay: a Daily Scratcher card each day worth $50 to $1,250 in cash or a free week of heist gear. It can't be bought, sold or withdrawn.
Every listed person has a stock-style ticker, like $TINY or $AOC, shown before their name. Each profile also has a category (politician, commentator, journalist, celebrity, athlete, creator, business), a citizenship flag and, for some, a political lean and ideology. You can filter by any of them on Browse.
Every listed journey has 200,000 shares. Half trade on a public pool priced by a bonding curve: each investment raises the price and each sale lowers it, so the price always reflects supply and demand and there's always a quote, even for new listings.
They're held in escrow for the person listed. If that person verifies their accounts and claims their profile, they receive the shares, locked for a period, and can then sell a limited amount each day.
Yes. Once enough shares have traded, each profile gets a standard option chain: calls and puts at set strikes, expiring on Fridays (two weekly and one monthly). Each contract covers 100 shares and settles in play money against the 24-hour average share price at expiry. A call pays 100 × (price − strike) if the price ends above the strike; a put pays 100 × (strike − price) if it ends below. Prices come from the Black-Scholes model using the person's own volatility, and rise as more players buy the same contract. You can sell to close anytime before expiry.
Like Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and Robinhood, there's no commission on buying or selling shares. Every sale pays the two small regulatory fees US brokers pass on: the SEC's $20.60 per $1 million sold and FINRA's $0.000195 per share (at most $9.79 a trade), each rounded up to the cent. Options cost $0.65 a contract.
Like the bank that takes a company public, the player who lists someone earns an underwriting fee: 1% of every buy in the listing's first week, paid by buyers on top of the price. Like a real fund's sponsor, the player who proposes an ETF earns its fund fee: 0.5% a year of what everyone holds in it, taken daily as a sliver of holders' units. Both count as taxable income. Listings and funds the game itself creates pay nobody.
The bank takes savings, lends for margin buys and lends shares for short selling, under real rules: Reg T lets you borrow up to half of what your stocks are worth, a margin call comes if your own stake falls below 25%, and a short needs 150% collateral. Savings are insured up to $25,000. It started with $1,000,000 of capital and, under the Basel rules, must keep equity of at least 8% of its loans. If losses wipe out the bank's capital it fails, calls in every loan and short, and is bailed out with new money at the start of the next weekly season.
Yes, like US taxes, on a weekly tax year. Income (Daily Scratcher prizes, including gear at its store price, daily bonuses, mission, invite and challenge rewards, heist loot, bot earnings and savings interest) and gains on shares held a week or less are taxed at 22%; gains on longer holds at 15%; short sales always count as short-term. The first $309.62 a week is tax-free, the real $16,100 standard deduction spread over 52 weeks. Losses offset gains, up to $57.69 a week of a net loss offsets income, and the rest carries forward. The wash sale rule applies: sell at a loss and buy the same person or ETF back within about 14 hours either way (the real 30 days, scaled to a one-week tax year), and that loss is added to the cost of the new shares instead, counting when you sell them for good. Store items add 7.53% sales tax, the average US rate. Pay any time before tax day, Monday 12 AM ET, or it's collected then from your cash, savings or shares with a 0.5% late penalty. Taxes go to the government's treasury, which pays for bank bailouts before any new money is printed.
Like a real bank, it keeps spare cash at the Federal Reserve and earns the Fed's interest on reserve balances, taken from the Fed's published rate each day. Savers get a little under that rate and margin borrowers pay more than it. It doesn't put deposits in stocks: in the US, the Volcker Rule (part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act) bars banks from trading for their own profit, and capital rules make holding stocks very costly, so real banks keep spare money at the Fed or in government bonds.
An ETF is one investment in a whole group of people, like every Democratic commentator. Players propose them from categories, countries, political views and individual people, and an admin approves them. Each one is weighted by market cap like the S&P 500, usually with a limit on how big any one person can get, and starts at $10; its price moves with the people inside it. It's the easiest way to diversify.
Once a day, cash you haven't invested loses a little value at the real US inflation rate (CPI). Invested money isn't affected. It's the same reason people invest real savings instead of leaving them as cash.
Once a day you can try to rob a house bot of some of its cash. Careful bots are harder to crack, and getting caught costs a fine. Gear from the heist store lasts a week and raises your odds or your take, or shrinks the fine. Beat a bot in a weekly head-to-head and you can hire it the next week for half of what it earns.
Complete three daily missions, set price alerts, place price-point orders (invest on a dip, take profit or stop loss), follow people on a watchlist, vouch for and comment on profiles, earn badges (some are secret), share profiles, and compete on the weekly and all-time leaderboards with notifications when you gain or lose a top spot.
The game never resets. Every Monday at 12 AM ET (US Eastern) a new weekly season starts, ranking players by how much they gained or lost that week. Your money and shares carry over, and your finish is saved on your profile. The all-time leaderboard tracks lifetime results since you joined. Neither one counts play money you were given (signup, daily and invite bonuses) as earnings.
Accounts ending in "Bot" are house bots, from SafeBot (very cautious) to YoloBot (reckless). They start with the same play money as everyone, pay the same fees and only use public information: prices, price changes, trade counts and vouches. They trade on a timer, never in reaction to your trades. Beat them.
Only public figures aged 18 or older. Anyone can suggest a listing, and an admin reviews each one before it goes live.
Yes. Open your profile and use 'Is this you?' to verify one of your linked accounts, then claim the profile or ask for it to be delisted. You can also use the privacy request form without an account.
No, unless a profile is marked as claimed. Listings are created from public information and don't imply endorsement.
Journey Shares runs in the browser and can be installed on Android and other phones as an app from Chrome's menu (Install app). It's free.
Yes. Journey Shares is a free stock market simulator and game. You start with $10,000 in play money and trade shares in public figures instead of companies, under real-world rules for fees, margin, short selling, options and taxes.
Yes. It uses the same ideas as real markets (supply and demand, bid-ask spreads, slippage, margin calls, capital gains tax, inflation), so you can practise trading with no financial risk. The wiki explains every term in plain English.
Yes. Every trade fills instantly and moves the price the moment it lands, and prices change as players trade. The prices come only from players, not from real stock markets.
Play-money shares, yes. Destiny trades as $TINY and Hasan Piker as $HSN, alongside other streamers, commentators, politicians, athletes and creators. The shares have no cash value, and the game isn't affiliated with the people listed unless a profile is claimed.
Listed streamers and commentators include Destiny ($TINY), Hasan Piker ($HSN), Cenk Uygur ($TYT), David Pakman ($DPAK) and Adam Mockler ($MOG), among others. Anyone can suggest a new listing for review.
Yes. It's free to play in the browser and can be installed on a phone as an app. Everything uses play money that can't be bought, sold or withdrawn.
Yes. It runs many Econ 101 and finance ideas live: prices set by supply and demand, cash eroded by real CPI inflation, a bank bound by Basel capital requirements that can fail and be bailed out, US-style taxes with a wash sale rule, and options priced with Black-Scholes. The wiki has a glossary of over 100 economics and trading terms.
No. There's no real money in or out: play money can't be bought or cashed out, and nothing has a cash value.
Practise with $10,000 in play money
Free. No real money involved.
