About Placebo Markets
A practice market for traders, built by a doctor.
Placebo Markets is a complete, fictional market for trading that runs on an Android phone. People use it to practise futures and options, live through crashes and rallies, trade commodities and crypto, and build their own listed company, with no real money involved.
Why it exists
87.7%
Placebo Markets is built on a simple idea: markets, and the restraint they demand, are skills you can practise. A flight simulator lets pilots meet bad weather on the ground. Placebo Markets lets you meet a crash, a rally or an expiry morning without real money at stake, as often as you like.
Our mission is a calmer, better-prepared generation of traders, who give the market its due and give their best hours back to the careers, skills and people that truly matter.
What we stand for
- 01
Fictional markets
Every company, price, fund and headline is invented. Nothing points you towards a real trade.
- 02
No real money
No deposits, no withdrawals and no KYC. There is no real money in the app to lose.
- 03
Privacy first
Sign in with Google, with no KYC and no ads. This website sets no cookies and runs no trackers.
- 04
Calm by design
Quiet colours, steady motion and no confetti. The app is built to slow you down, not to speed you up.
- 05
Care for the person
We think about the person behind the trades. Practising first, and stepping back when it stops being fun, are always welcome.
The founder
I’m a doctor, and the founder of Placebo Markets.
My work explores how a single habit loop, left unbroken, quietly draws other unsafe habits in with it, and how that ripple reaches a person’s health and relationships.
Placebo Markets grew out of that work. It is a safe place to practise markets, and restraint, before any real money is involved, without abruptly cutting off the brain’s well-worn dopamine reward pathways.
My hope is simple: that the rush stays here, and your best hours go to the work and the people you care about.
Dr. Varshith ReddyMBBS (AFMC), Biodesign Fellow (IIT Bombay)
Contact
For questions, partnerships, schools or press, write to drvarshith21@gmail.com.