InstincTrader

Beat the chart before the bell.

Play with simulated prices and virtual money. Practice timing long and short trades in a timed round, then compare your return with the simulated asset. No real trades or deposits.

Guest rounds are temporary. Create an account for saved progress and multiplayer. For ages 13 and up.

Your first round, explained.

InstincTrader is a timing game made by The Lopes Corporation. Each round starts with $10,000 in virtual cash. A generated chart unfolds against a timer; your decisions determine when you hold cash and when you hold a position. There is no brokerage connection, deposit, withdrawal, or real-money prize.

Choose your round. Open the guest Solo demo, choose Long, Short or Dual, then select the available asset category, speed and round length. Rounds can last 30, 60, 90 or 120 seconds.

Read the chart. The initial chart gives you context. Once the round starts, new prices appear as time passes. The asset and dates are game context, not a live market feed.

Open and close a position. Use the chart controls below. You can hold only one position at a time; opening uses your current virtual account value. Between trades, you hold cash.

Review the result. Any open position closes at the final price when time runs out. Compare your return, the asset return and your trade statistics. Guest results disappear when you reload or leave; they do not earn saved rewards or leaderboard places.

Long: buy, then sell

Tap once to buy when no position is open. Tap again to sell. A rise from $100 to $110 earns 10%; a fall from $100 to $90 loses 10%. With $10,000, buying at $100 creates 100 virtual units; selling at $110 returns $11,000.

Watch what happens after entry rather than assuming every dip will recover. Staying in cash is also a choice.

Short: sell, then cover

In Short mode, tap to open a short and tap again to cover it. A fall from $100 to $90 earns 10%; a rise to $110 loses 10%. The game calculates the price difference using the virtual units opened at entry.

This is a simplified game model. It does not reproduce real borrowing, margin requirements or trading costs.

Dual: choose the direction

With no position open, a single tap opens a long and a double-tap opens a short. Once either position is open, tap to close it before choosing another direction. You cannot hold a long and a short simultaneously.

For example, you can close a long after a rise, wait in cash, then double-tap to short. Every entry starts from your current virtual balance.

How scoring actually works.

Round return = (final account value − $10,000) ÷ $10,000 × 100. A final balance of $10,800 means +8%. Finishing with $9,500 means −5%. A trade still open at the bell is closed automatically and included in the result.

Long trade return = (exit price − entry price) ÷ entry price × 100. For a short, reverse the price difference: (entry price − exit price) ÷ entry price × 100. The simulator uses the full current balance for each entry, with no separate fee or slippage deduction.

Returns compound. A +10% trade followed by a −10% trade turns $10,000 into $11,000 and then $9,900: a −1% round, not 0%. The average trade return and the round return therefore answer different questions.

Asset return compares the simulated price at the start of the playable round with its final price. Vs Market subtracts that asset return from your round return. If you earn +8% while the asset gains +5%, you beat it by 3 percentage points. If you lose 2% while it loses 7%, you beat it by 5 percentage points but still lost virtual money.

Win rate is profitable closed trades divided by all closed trades. Three profitable trades out of five means 60%; a break-even trade is not a win. A high win rate alone does not guarantee a positive round because losses can outweigh gains.

Generated prices, not historical replay.

InstincTrader generates each chart from a random seed and an asset profile. Profiles supply a reference price, volatility, drift and price bounds. The generator combines random fluctuations, waves, temporary impulses, a trend change and a short simulated event. It also pulls prices toward a reference level and rebounds prices that cross the configured bounds.

The chart includes an initial history before the playable segment. If the generated series moves too little, a fallback curve supplies enough movement for a round. Displayed dates advance through weekdays, but these are synthetic chart dates: the lines are neither downloaded historical prices nor real-time quotes.

Solo rounds choose a fresh seed. Multiplayer uses a shared round seed and settings so opponents can face the same generated scenario. Faster playback changes how quickly chart points arrive; it does not make the result a forecast.

Use the game to explore its controls and your decisions under a timer. Success here does not establish real-world trading skill or predict investment returns. Real markets have costs, liquidity constraints and risks this game does not model.

Guest or account?

Guest Solo gives you the same Solo chart and trading mechanics without registration. It keeps the current demo in memory and does not save account progress. Sign in or create an account above to keep statistics, achievements and unlocks, or to join Local and Global multiplayer.