A Pretend Stock Market Lets Students Invest in Classmates

Imagine your friend Maya sells friendship bracelets at school. She's good at it. She sells out every Friday.

Now imagine you could own a tiny piece of Maya's bracelet business. Not for real, just for practice. If her business keeps growing, your piece becomes worth more points. If she stops showing up on Fridays, it's worth less.

That's the idea behind something new from Houston, Texas. On November 9, 2026, a nonprofit called The Sanders Hand announced the YBC Stock Market Exchange. It's a practice stock market where students "invest" pretend money in businesses run by other students.

Let's see how it works, and how you can try a paper version yourself.

The Sanders Hand was founded in 2017 by Sebastian Sanders. Its main program is the Young Billionaires Club, or YBC, which teaches business and money skills to young people ages 12 to 25. The group says it has reached more than 10,000 people.

The new exchange is a learning tool for classrooms. According to the announcement, it connects student-owned businesses with pretend stock market activity.

Here's the important part: no real money is involved. Students use virtual currency, which means points on a screen. Nobody can cash out, and nobody actually owns part of anyone's business. It's practice, like a flight simulator for money.

Right now the exchange is an early test version built with Google Sheets. The group plans to turn it into a web app that works on school Chromebooks and tablets.

A share is a small piece of ownership in a company. People also call shares stock.

Think of a pizza cut into 8 slices. If you own 1 slice, you own one eighth of the pizza. A company can be cut into slices too, sometimes millions of them. Each slice is a share.

Investor.gov, a website run by the U.S. government, explains that people buy stock for a few reasons. One is that the price might go up over time, so they could sell it later for more than they paid. Another is that some companies share part of their profits with owners. Those payments are called dividends.

But stock prices can go down, too. If a company does badly, its shares can lose value. That's called risk, and every investor has to think about it.

A place where people buy and sell shares is called a stock exchange.

The announcement describes five steps.

1. Listing. A student founder signs up their real business. They write a description, a mission and some starting numbers, like how much they sell.
2. Pretend money. Every student gets virtual currency to invest.
3. Trading. Students choose which classmate businesses to "buy" and "sell," following classroom rules. They watch how prices change when lots of people want the same one.
4. Reports. Student founders share updates with the class: what they sold, what went well, what went wrong. Real companies do this too. Their updates are called earnings reports.
5. Class discussion. Teachers lead talks about risk, value and treating people fairly in business.

So there are two jobs. Some students are founders running a business. Others are analysts, which means they study businesses and decide where to put their pretend money. You could be both.

Sanders said the goal isn't one more worksheet. "We're not trying to create another financial literacy lesson," he said in the announcement.

Two big words explain most of it: supply and demand.

Supply is how much of something there is. Demand is how many people want it.

Say Maya's bracelet business has 10 pretend shares, and each one starts at 10 points. Then Maya announces she sold 40 bracelets at the school fair. Suddenly 15 classmates want to buy her shares. But there are only 10. People offer more points to get one. The price climbs to 14.

Let's do the math. If you bought 2 shares at 10 points each, you paid 20 points. At 14 points each, your shares are worth 28. You're up 8 points.

Now flip it. Maya gets busy with soccer and skips three Fridays. Fewer people want her shares. The price drops to 7. Your 2 shares are worth 14 points. You're down 6.

Notice that Maya's bracelets didn't change. What changed was what people believed about her business. News moves prices, and that's true in real stock markets as well.

Good analysts don't just pick their best friend. They ask questions.

• Does the business sell something people actually want?
• Are sales going up, staying flat or going down?
• Does the founder show up and keep promises?
• How much does it cost to make each item, and how much is left over as profit?
• What could go wrong? Is there a plan for that?

Smart investors also diversify. That's a fancy word for not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you spread your points across four businesses and one has a bad month, the other three can hold you up.

And here's a secret. These questions help founders just as much. If you run a business, try answering them about yourself. Would you invest in you?

Yes. All you need is paper, pencils and a few people. Try it with your class, a club or your family.

Step 1. Pick three or four pretend or real kid businesses. A lemonade stand, a dog-walking service, a slime shop.

Step 2. Give each business 10 paper shares. Write a starting price of 10 points on the board.

Step 3. Hand every player 100 points to spend. Use a tally sheet to keep track.

Step 4. Each "founder" gives a one-minute update. Then players decide what to buy or sell.

Step 5. After each round, change the prices. If more people wanted a share than there were shares, raise the price by 2. If nobody wanted it, lower it by 2.

Step 6. Play four rounds. Add up your points and your shares at the end.

If you're a founder in the game, you'll want a short plan to show investors. You can write it in a notebook, a spreadsheet, or a planning tool like Foundra that helps beginners break a business idea into simple steps.

Afterward, talk about it. Which business went up the most? Was it the best business, or just the best update?

Not quite, and it's good to know the differences.

In the real stock market, people use real money and can lose it. Kids can't open their own investing accounts. A grown-up has to do it for them.

Real companies also follow strict rules about what they tell investors. The student exchange borrows the idea of reports but keeps everything inside the classroom.

Practice markets aren't new. The SIFMA Foundation's Stock Market Game has let students invest a pretend $100,000 in real companies for many years. What's different in Houston is the twist: the "companies" belong to students sitting in the same room.

Remember, the web app isn't finished yet. The group has a working test version and a plan. That's how most businesses start.

• A Houston nonprofit, The Sanders Hand, announced a practice stock market for student-owned businesses on November 9, 2026.
• Students use pretend money only. Nobody buys real ownership or gets paid cash.
• A share is a small piece of a company. Prices move with supply and demand.
• News and beliefs change prices, even when the product stays the same.
• Good investors ask questions and spread their money across more than one business.
• You can run a paper version with 10 shares per business and 100 points per player.

What is the YBC Stock Market Exchange? It's a classroom tool from the Young Billionaires Club in Houston where students invest pretend money in businesses run by other students.

Do students use real money? No. The announcement says there's no real money, no cash prizes and no real ownership.

What is a share? A share is a small piece of ownership in a company. Shares are also called stock.

Why do share prices change? Prices rise when more people want to buy than sell, and fall when more want to sell than buy.

Can kids buy real stocks? Not alone. A parent or guardian has to open and manage a real investing account for a child.

How can I try this at home? Use paper shares, give every player 100 points, and change prices after each round based on what people wanted.

1. Beyond the Classroom: How a Texas Youth Entrepreneurship Organization is Building a New Stock Market Experience for Student-Owned Businesses, ABNewswire, November 9, 2026
2. The Sanders Hand: Cultivating the Next Generation of Young Entrepreneurs with County Connections Grant, Houston Style Magazine, August 13, 2024
3. Stocks FAQs, Investor.gov, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
4. The Stock Market Game, SIFMA Foundation