STOCKJUNGLE.com is similar to a lot business-related sites, serving as a place for interested investors to meet and mingle. Yet it manages to carve out its own niche by taking the term “virtual reality” very seriously.
In a sense, StockJungle.com is actually two sites -one rooted in the virtual world and one rooted in the real one.
On the virtual side, it’s a gathering place for finance junkies. It’s not a news site, though it does have a weekly news bulletin complete with notable quotes. But it has other typical offerings, like chat rooms with discussions about initial public offerings, bulls and bears, wireless and whatnot. There’s also an online portfolio game, where surfers can practice trading with fantasy money risk-free while playing for a prize of actual cash.
It’s quintessential Web. StockJungle’s “community members” have screen names like mathlady, MicroCaptain and Zenphoenix. They leave messages for each other in the middle of the night -as the Web-addicted tend to do. A lot of their talk has to do with their friendly competition, in which they’re each competitively managing a virtual portfolio with $1 million of play money.
But StockJungle.com has a very real side, too. Not long after the site was launched in 1999, the company behind it started a community-based mutual fund to use the tips left by and information gleaned from its community. So, by participating online, you’re taking part in a grand experiment.
Virtual and real financial life have intersected before. Tips and whisper numbers circulate and have pushed stock prices up and down.
In this case, the fund’s managers watch what’s happening on the site, and they track the most successful players. The fund is actively managed, but the online community is integral.
It’s as though the online portfolio game is more than a game -the cute, little icons indicating how the community is feeling and trading on that day indicate something real, even if the people playing aren’t making or losing money. Investing in the fund is not mandatory, and the site is free.
The company is also developing a hedge fund.
But the StockJungle.com Community Intelligence Fund, trading under the ticker symbol SJCIX, is down 28.43 percent year-to-date. So maybe it’s wise to stay virtual. Because, well, you know: It’s a jungle out there.