Free Stock Picking Contests: Draft a Lineup, Track Your Alpha Score

How Alpha Contests work

1. Create a free account. New accounts get a 20 Alpha Coin (AC) signup bonus.
2. Choose a contest in the Alpha Contests lobby. Contests are grouped by length, from daily contests to multi-week leagues, plus special events, and each one shows its format, entry fee in Alpha Coins (some are free to enter), player limits and when it locks.
3. Research, then draft. Read the AI report for any stock you are considering on its ticker page, then build your lineup within the contest's rules.
4. Lineups lock. Once a contest locks, picks are final. For Salary Cap contests, lineups lock at 3:45 AM ET on contest day, before the premarket opens.
5. Get scored on real market moves. Your lineup's performance is tracked against real stock prices, and standings update on the leaderboard.

Contest formats

The lobby lets you filter contests by type: Classic, Head-to-Head (H2H), Double Up, League, Multiplier, GPP (tournament-style) and Sector Showdown. Some contests also run in Salary Cap mode, a draft-style lineup described below. Rules differ by contest, so read the details on each one before you enter.

Weighted lineups

Many contests use a weighted lineup: you pick a set of stocks and decide how much weight each one gets, within limits set for that contest, such as a cap on how much of your lineup can go into a single stock or sector.

Salary Cap contests

Every stock has a draft price in Star Coins (SC). You get 50,000 SC to fill 8 slots, with no more than 4 stocks from any one sector. Expensive "stars" and cheap "value" picks force real trade-offs, and everyone faces the same prices and budget. Your score is your lineup's average return, with all 8 picks counting equally. The full rules are on How to Play, and our fantasy stock market game page goes deeper on draft strategy.

Why pair a contest with AI research

StockAlpha puts the research right next to the pick. Before you draft, you can read an AI report on each stock in the roughly 500-stock universe, check the sector briefs for what has been moving, and brush up on the basics in Alpha Learning. When a pick surprises you, going back to that research is how you learn what you missed.

Good starting points: what moves stock prices and building a diversified portfolio.

Leaderboards and your Alpha Score

The all-time leaderboard ranks players across completed contests. You can view it for all time or the last 12 months, 90 days or 30 days, and sort by Alpha Score, wins, Alpha Coins won, average return or win rate. On the leaderboard, Alpha Score is a ranking number that blends your win rate, how many contests you've played and a small average-return bonus, so steady players rank above one-time winners. It excludes bot accounts, and player names are anonymized.

Once you're signed in, the contest lobby and your contest dashboard also show your personal Alpha Score: a skill rating graded from A+ to F that builds with your completed contests. It is designed to reward a sound process as well as results, and it breaks down into five parts: research insight (whether you viewed a stock's research before picking it), diversification, timing, accuracy and consistency across contests.

What winners get

Winners split the contest's Alpha Coin prize pool, which you can use to enter more contests. During beta, Founding Members who complete 5 or more contests earn a permanent badge. There are no cash prizes, and Alpha Coins have no monetary value.

You can also earn more free coins by sharing content (2 AC each) and referring friends (10 AC each), alongside 5 free Alpha Coins every week.

For students, clubs and first-time investors

Because contests are free and use practice currency, they work well for anyone learning how the market behaves: students, investing clubs, or friends who want a friendly competition. Each person creates their own free account and can enter the same open contests, then compare results on the leaderboard. Private leagues are listed as a planned paid feature on our pricing page and are not available yet.

Honest limitations

• Practice, not real trading. Contests leave out taxes, trading fees, slippage and the emotions of real money.
• Short windows are noisy. Over a day or a few weeks, luck plays a big part. Judge yourself over many contests, not one.
• Salary Cap prices are model-driven. Draft prices come from AI signals plus market data, and no model predicts a single trading day with certainty.
• Winning a contest is not a strategy. Concentrated, high-risk lineups can top a leaderboard; the same approach with real savings could be very costly.

How it compares

Stock market games vary widely. Some offer cash prizes, some are built for classrooms, and some are pure paper trading. StockAlpha's contests use practice coins only and sit next to free AI research and lessons, so the focus is on learning to pick, not on winning money.

Enter your first contest

Sign up, claim your free Alpha Coins, and draft a lineup of stocks you've researched. Then watch the leaderboard and learn from every result.

Frequently asked questions