MarketRace

Inspiration

Financial markets are driven as much by human emotion as by data, yet most financial education focuses only on technical concepts, overlooking other factors that influence decision-making. As students, we've seen how intimidating and inaccessible investing can be, especially for younger learners who are curious but don't know where to start. MarketRace was inspired by the idea that the best way to understand the market is by experiencing it. By turning real historical market events into an interactive, gamified experience, we wanted to make financial literacy approachable and engaging while helping users recognize patterns in their decisions.

What it does

MarketRace is an interactive financial literacy game that teaches users to recognize market sentiment and cognitive biases through real historical market scenarios. Players build and manage portfolios by responding to real-world news articles, making investment decisions under the same pressures investors faced at the time. Throughout the experience, MarketRace tracks performance over time, analyzes user decisions, and ultimately provides a personalized summary of each player’s market journey. Users can also compete in a multiplayer mode to see who can best maximize returns while navigating market volatility.

How we built it

MarketRace is a full-stack web application with a React frontend and Python FastAPI backend, designed to deliver an educational gaming experience that teaches financial literacy through real historical market scenarios.

Challenges we ran into

We initially planned to use K2 Think for our AI-powered analysis, but pivoted to Google's Gemini API during development. Another of our biggest challenges was making complex financial concepts accessible without sacrificing educational value. It was crucial that we created an interface that felt like a game rather than a highly technical one.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created a platform that makes financial education accessible and engaging, especially for younger students interested in investing. As students ourselves, we built MarketRace to be something we would genuinely use, as an experience that feels fun and approachable because of its gamified, hands-on design.

What we learned

Through building MarketRace, we learned how powerful experiential learning can be when teaching complex financial concepts. Seeing users react to real market news made it clear that emotions and biases play a major role in investment decisions. From a technical perspective, we gained hands-on experience working with historical market data, designing systems that analyze user behavior rather than just outcomes, and building interactive features under tight time constraints. We also learned the importance of balancing realism with simplicity to keep the experience educational without overwhelming users.

What's next for MarketMind

Next, we plan to further develop MarketRace’s multiplayer experience by enabling real-time competition, shared market events, and live leaderboards. We want players to react to the same news simultaneously, creating a more dynamic and social environment that mirrors real market behavior. Beyond multiplayer, we aim to expand the number of historical scenarios, improve personalized feedback, and add deeper insights into how different investing strategies and psychological biases affect long-term performance.