StockEd

A real-time virtual passive income simulator powered by Nebius and NVIDIA AI, helping newcomers get familiar with investing without risking real money.

Comment

Inspiration

As young people stepping into the financial world, we experienced a common frustration firsthand: the paralyzing fear of losing real money. Because of this fear, lack of familiarity, and zero room for error, most beginners either leave their money in stagnant accounts where it barely grows or panic-sell during market volatility due to a lack of knowledge.

We wanted to solve this exact pain point by creating StockEd. We built this virtual investment terminal to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world execution. By pairing real market metrics—authentic numbers for stocks, precious metals, energy commodities, and real estate properties—with a virtual cash sandbox, we give newcomers a safe environment to explore passive income generation, build market intuition, and gain confidence without financial risk.

What it does

StockEd is a modern fintech virtual passive income generation and simulation platform:

  • Multi-Asset Marketplace: Enables users to simulate investments across Shares (powered by Yahoo Finance live data), Precious Metals & Oil (Gold, Silver, Platinum, Crude Oil with unit conversions), Real Estate (catalog of 150+ properties across 20+ cities with dynamic rental yields), and Fixed Income (Bank FDs and Sovereign U.S. Treasury Bonds).
  • Virtual Risk-Free Economy: Starts users with $10,000 in virtual seed capital to build, test, and manage diversified portfolios.
  • Passive Income & Yield Engine: Simulates compound interest, dividend payouts, and rental cash flows over time.
  • Performance Milestone Tracker: Features an automated investor status tier system that rewards users as their net profit grows.

How we built it

  • Backend & Database: Built using Python and Streamlit for a responsive web interface, backed by an SQLite database (users.db) to securely store user credentials, wallet balances, active portfolio holdings, fixed deposits, and transaction logs with bcrypt password hashing.
  • Market Data Integration: Integrated yfinance to pull real-time pricing, historical 10-year trends, company fundamentals (P/E ratios, market caps, dividend yields), and treasury benchmark yields (^TNX).
  • AI Financial Mentorship: Integrated the OpenAI client pointing to NVIDIA NIM (nvidia/nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b) to provide GPU-accelerated risk evaluations, valuation health checks, and beginner-friendly financial guidance.
  • Data Visualization: Built interactive charts and asset allocation breakdowns using Plotly (plotly.express, plotly.graph_objects) and native Streamlit visual metrics.

Challenges we ran into

  • Data Normalization across Asset Classes: Normalizing completely different asset parameters (e.g., stock share quantities vs. commodity units like ounces/barrels vs. real estate property purchase prices) into a unified calculation engine.
  • Balancing Realism with Accessibility: Ensuring the simulation felt grounded in real financial metrics without overwhelming new users with complex Wall Street jargon or messy UI layouts.
  • API Latency & Fallbacks: Managing live financial data fetches reliably while providing graceful fallbacks if market feeds experience temporary rate limits.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Successfully creating a fully immersive multi-asset trading terminal where real-world market data drives risk-free virtual portfolio growth.
  • Integrating NVIDIA NIM (Nemotron) to deliver real-time, context-aware AI investment intelligence and valuation gauges directly inside the trading workflow.
  • Developing a robust SQLite database architecture supporting secure user authentication, portfolio tracking, and complex asset liquidation logic.

What we learned

  • Financial Modeling Mechanics: Deepened our understanding of real estate rental yields, bond coupon mechanics, dividend compounding formulas, and multi-asset portfolio balancing.
  • Fintech UI Design: Realized that overcoming the fear of investing requires prioritizing clean visual aesthetics, psychological safety, and quick feedback loops over dense spreadsheets.
  • Advanced API Orchestration: Gained hands-on experience linking external financial feeds with large language model endpoints for real-time advisory features.

What's next for StockEd

  • AI-Powered Portfolio Insights: Expanding the Nemotron integration to give personalized risk diversification tips based on a user's active holdings.
  • Social & Leaderboard Modes: Adding peer-to-peer virtual investment challenges to let friends test strategies together.
  • Dynamic Scenario Stress-Testing: Allowing users to simulate macroeconomic shocks (e.g., sudden inflation spikes or market corrections) to test portfolio resilience.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history