The competitions are popular with novices eager to learn about online investing, and sponsors welcome the traffic the contests draw to their sites. Some analysts say stock-picking games can be a great way for beginners to get a feel for investing without the financial risk. They teach you to take the highest risk you can conceive of to win the game. That's not suitable to most people. Contestants try to maximize their gains during the allotted time-period, usually a month.
Some sites even use real-time stock prices to execute trades.
There really isn't a difference between what you can do with a simulation and what you can do with an online trading account. It's difficult to say how many online investing contests exist, but the number of sites featuring stock-picking games clearly is growing. People are using them for all kinds of reasons. They're becoming an important tool for every financial portal. Paradigm initially provided financial tools, including market simulations, to professional money managers, and branched out to serve consumers three years ago.