No. A basic understanding of interest rates and cash flow is helpful, but the simulation includes onboarding to money market instruments and decisions.
Money Markets Simulation
Students take control of short-term funding and investment decisions - balancing liquidity, interest rates, and institutional risk - in our Money Markets Simulation.
Money Markets Simulation Overview
The Money Markets Simulation immerses students in the real-time operations of institutional treasury desks and short-term debt markets. Built by financial markets professionals and academic economists, this simulation replicates how banks, corporates, and funds manage liquidity, short-term borrowing, and overnight lending in fast-moving environments.
Students must respond to interest rate shifts, central bank actions, and market volatility as they decide how to invest surplus funds or raise capital via commercial paper, repos, or interbank lending. The simulation emphasizes timing, pricing, and risk calibration in high-frequency markets.
Ideal for courses in treasury management, financial markets, or macro-financial policy, this simulation brings an often-overlooked corner of finance to life.
Money Markets Simulation Concepts
Students engage with key ideas underpinning the functioning of short-term financial markets, including:
- Money Market Instruments: Treasury bills, commercial paper, certificates of deposit, repos, and interbank loans
- Interest Rate Mechanics: Benchmark rates (e.g., LIBOR, SOFR), yield curves, and rate spreads
- Liquidity Management: Forecasting inflows/outflows and maintaining solvency buffers
- Credit and Counterparty Risk: Evaluating borrower risk and setting exposure limits
- Monetary Policy Transmission: How central bank operations affect short-term funding markets
- Pricing and Settlement: Day counts, discounting, and settlement timing
Gameflow
What Students Do
In this simulation, students act as treasury managers or institutional investors, tasked with deploying or sourcing funds in the money market. They will:
- Evaluate cash positions and liquidity forecasts
- Decide how to invest surplus funds or meet shortfalls through borrowing
- Choose between instruments with varying rates, durations, and risk
- Respond to central bank announcements, credit events, or liquidity shocks
- Monitor exposure limits and manage counterparty relationships
- Calculate returns, costs, and risk-adjusted decisions under time pressure
What Students Learn
Students learn how short-term markets function at the operational level - and why they matter. They will develop:
- A working knowledge of major money market instruments and their use cases
- The ability to make time-sensitive funding and investment decisions
- Practical understanding of how monetary policy influences short-term rates
- Risk awareness in assessing counterparties and balancing duration with liquidity
- A systems-thinking view of how individual actors affect market-wide liquidity
Why This Money Markets Simulation Works
Money markets are foundational to the global financial system - but students often never “see” them. This simulation makes them visible, accessible, and urgent.
By placing students in control of short-term capital decisions, the simulation transforms abstract topics into strategic dilemmas with real financial trade-offs. It emphasizes judgment, timing, and the interconnectedness of institutions under central bank oversight.
Whether in a finance, economics, or central banking course, this simulation helps students connect monetary theory to daily practice.