The fake trading app prank, and how to film it

First, the line you don’t cross

A prank is a joke with a reveal at the end, and nothing real rides on it. Telling your brother you’ve just put your savings into one stock, filming his face, and showing him it’s a prop a minute later is a prank. Showing him the same screen so he lends you money, copies the trade, joins a group you run or pays you to teach him is fraud, whichever tool drew the screen. This guide is about the first kind; our acceptable use policy covers the rest.

Three more limits. Play it only on someone who knows you: a friend or family member, never a stranger. Pick stakes that make the reveal funny rather than a relief: a claim about your own imaginary money lands, while a claim about theirs (their savings, the rent, an account you share) produces panic, and panic doesn’t cut into anything worth posting. And keep the prank inside the app. It makes screens, not messages; a text or an email dressed up as coming from a real bank or broker is a phishing tool, whatever the joke was meant to be.

Prank website or prank app: what you’re opening

A fake trading prank website is a page you open in a browser from a link: nothing to install, and an address bar across the top. A prank app is something you install first, usually from an app store. Pozer’s trading prank starts as the first and becomes the second. You set the account up in the editor, tap Create home-screen app, and get the app’s link and a QR code to scan with the phone you’ll prank with.

Open that link in a phone’s browser and the trading app fills the page, with none of Pozer’s site around it. Nothing downloads from an app store, and whoever holds the phone doesn’t sign in to anything. The link is unlisted, too: search engines are told not to index it, so nobody finds your account by searching. In a browser tab, though, the address bar shows the link and your Edit button stays on screen, and a friend can spot either.

So the prank runs from the home screen. Add the link there (on iPhone, in Safari: Share, then Add to Home Screen; on Android, in Chrome: ⋮, then Install app) and it opens fullscreen from its own icon and name, with no address bar, which is what sells it when the phone changes hands. Building it, installing it and filming it are free.

Keep it on your own phone, in your hand. Texting them the link isn’t the prank: it opens in their browser with the link across the top, Pro removes the mark only on phones where you’re signed in, so theirs shows a visible Pozer mark, and you aren’t in the room to reveal it.

What the app does when they tap

Pozer’s Robinhood-style trading app (an original design with no Robinhood name, logo or artwork) opens on Investing: a strip of account names, the account’s total, today’s move, a line chart with a row of windows under it (LIVE, 1D, 1W, 1M, 3M, YTD, 1Y and ALL), then Buying power, two cards for the day’s biggest movers, and your Options, Crypto, Stocks & ETFs and Cash. Tapping a stock opens its own page, and that page is where Trade lives. Everything a prank needs happens on those two screens.

Just as useful is knowing where the prices come from. Under Positions, Prices has two settings. On Live market prices, the default, each stock’s price, its day and its charts follow the market, a little behind it: you type the ticker, the shares and what you paid, and the app does the rest. On Type my own, every price sits exactly where you typed it. The line moves a little (LIVE streams a short loop, and the dot at the end of the 1D line pulses), but no figure changes by itself. Live suits a prank built on real stocks on a real day. For a crash, a jackpot or any figure the market won’t hand you, type your own.

The five icons on the floating tab bar open Investing, Crypto (Lists, if the account holds no coins), Search, Social and Account, and the Buying power row opens Cash; all of them agree with the figures on Investing. Search finds only what’s in the account. Plan the prank around Investing and the stock pages, and keep your friend near them.

Pick a trading prank the app can carry

• “I just bought it.” The classic stock prank. You tap Trade, then Buy, on camera, and the order-completed card does the talking: the shares bought, the average price and the total cost. This is the one the app is built for.
• “Have a look at this.” You hand them the phone on Investing. They can scroll, switch windows, drag along the chart, switch accounts, open a stock or wander into the other tabs, and it behaves like an app because it is one.
• “It all went red.” The market-crash version. A losing day turns the screen over. On the 1D view the app opens on, the Today figure, the chart and the window buttons all go orange-red, and so does every holding that fell. With live prices you wait for a red day in the market; with Type my own you choose it.
• “My calls went to zero.” The options version of the loss. A call bought for a couple of dollars is worth cents on a red day, and its page says so in orange-red: the contract’s price, the day’s drop and a Total return that has eaten almost everything it cost. The set-up is below.

What it can’t carry is a move you script while they watch. Live prices move only as the market does, and typed ones don’t move at all. A stock crashing in real time takes two takes and a cut, with Prices on Type my own and the numbers changed in between; the reaction video guide covers how to make the before and the after agree.

The stock market prank with the highest stakes is the loss: a red day taken as far as it goes, played on a shorter fuse than a win. The “I lost all our money” version is further down, with the account that carries it and where the reveal goes.

A stock market prank (or share market prank) that holds up

Call it a trading prank, a stock market prank or a share market prank: it fails the same way. Your friend checks. They open their own app or search the stock, and the price on your phone is wrong. With Prices on Live market prices, the default, it isn’t. Each stock’s price and day come from the market, a little behind it, and its page charts the stock’s real price history, from 1D to MAX. A friend who knows where Nvidia closed finds the same number and the same line, and when they press and drag along the chart, the price follows their finger.

Live prices only give you the day the market gives you. For a crash on cue, a stock that triples, or a company that doesn’t exist, set Prices to Type my own, under Positions. Every price and day move then stays where you typed it, and the total, the Today line and the colours follow. One more thing for a prank on live prices: they’re quoted in US dollars, so pick US-listed stocks. The app prints money in US dollars, euros, pounds or Indonesian rupiah.

The options version: calls that collapse on a red day

Options make a loss read faster than shares do. Each option position sits under Options on Investing and opens its own page: the contract’s name, such as NVDA $230 Call, its price and today’s move, a chart, then Your position, with contracts, current price, average cost, market value, expiration and the breakeven price, and Today’s return and Total return under them. A call bought for a couple of dollars and now worth cents shows almost all of its cost gone.

1. Set Prices to Type my own, under Positions, so the day stays where you put it.
2. Give the stock a red day: a negative Day % on its row. The share price at the top of the option’s page turns orange-red with it.
3. Under Options, type what the calls cost and what they’re worth now. The template’s NVDA $230 Call holds 10 contracts at an Average cost of $2.31, which is $2,310.00 paid. Set its Current price to 0.12 and its Day % to −84: the market value reads $120.00, and Total return shows a loss of $2,190.00, nearly 95% of what the calls cost.
4. On camera, tap the contract under Options and hold the phone up on its page. Breakeven sits at $232.31, far above the share price, which says the rest.

With live prices the same position follows its stock through the day, so a call loses value when the stock falls, but it won’t collapse on cue. A bet that went wrong earlier still works live: type a Current price far under the Average cost and Total return shows the loss. For calls that die in a single day, type your own. Either way, the same rules as the rest of this guide apply: someone who knows you, imaginary money, and a reveal in the same scene.

Set the account up for the joke

The account’s figures are set in the editor: Quick setup first (the app’s name, the account name, the theme, buying power and currency), then Header, Chart, Positions and Options. These are the fields that decide whether a prank survives:

• Buying power has to cover the buy. The ticket won’t take an order bigger than your buying power: the line under the amount turns orange-red and Review stays dim, a pause they can see. Work out the cost at the price on screen before you roll. At the template’s typed example price of $186.54, a hundred Nvidia shares cost $18,654.00, inside the default buying power of $24,813.42; two hundred, at $37,308.00, don’t. With live prices, check the price on the stock’s page first. For a bigger buy, raise buying power.
• Type it to the cent. $24,813.42 reads as an account; $25,000.00 reads as a number someone typed, and a round balance is one of the signs viewers name when they call a trading app a demo account. It shows under the chart, on the Cash page, in the order ticket and on the Account tab.
• Make the stock the story. You get up to eight holdings, each with a Ticker, Company, Shares and Average cost, plus a Price and Day % when you type your own prices, and up to six options. The list shows the ticker and share count, a small line of the day, and a filled pill with the day’s move, green if it’s up and orange-red if it’s down; the Holding pills show setting switches it to total return, equity, price or today’s return. The company name appears on the stock’s own page.
• Decide the mood of the day. The Today figure under the total is worked out from each row’s day move; there’s no separate field for it. With live prices the market sets each row’s day. With Type my own, a good day or a bad one is yours to decide, row by row in Day %. Average cost decides each holding’s total return either way.
• A ticker they know needs a price they’d believe. With live prices that’s done for you: a real company shows where it actually trades, and its chart matches the real one. If you type your own, set a real company’s price near where it trades. Anyone who follows the stock will know a wrong number.

Where the Buy button is, and how the moment plays

Buy isn’t on Investing. Each stock’s page ends in a bar with the account on the left and one Trade button, and Trade opens Buy and Sell over the dimmed page, so the move on camera is three taps: the stock, Trade, Buy. That’s better for the shot than it sounds, because the stock’s page tells the viewer what’s being bought before the thumb lands.

1. Tap the stock in the list. Its page opens with the ticker over the company name in large type, the price and today’s move, a chart with its own row of windows and, further down, a Your position block: Shares, Market value, Average cost, Portfolio diversity, Today’s return and Total return. Floating above the tabs is the trade bar: the account on the left (Individual, by default) and one Trade button in the day’s colour.
2. Tap Trade, then Buy. A full-screen ticket opens on a dollar amount, with Market order at the top, $1, $10 and $100 buttons, Review and a keypad. Tap Dollars to switch it to shares, and the ticket lists Number of shares, Market price and Estimated cost as you type. Review stays dim until there’s an amount the account can pay for.
3. Tap Review. The next screen restates the order, with an Order summary in plain words, and a band in the day’s colour along the bottom reads Swipe up to submit. Swipe it, and the screen floods with colour while it says Sending order…, then a card slides up: NVDA order completed, with Shares bought, Average price per share, Total cost and the account.
4. The card doesn’t time out. It stays on screen until you tap Done, so there’s no hurry: hold it up to their face. View order, under Done, shows the status, Filled, and the time the order was submitted.

The Submitted time comes from the phone’s own clock at the moment of the swipe, so it shows the same time as the status bar in the same shot. Sell is the same ticket the other way round, with a Sell all button, the Bid price and an Estimated credit, and a Total credit on the card; it won’t sell more than the holding has.

Then the part to script around. After Done, the stock’s page shows more shares and a bigger market value, and Buying power is lower. Back on Investing, the buy hasn’t moved the total or the Today line: the money went from buying power into the stock at today’s price, and shares bought today haven’t earned today’s move. (With live prices, both still follow the market.) The payoff of a buy is the card’s Total cost and the drop in Buying power, not the big number at the top. “I just spent eighteen grand” works while you’re pointing at Total cost; “look at my balance” doesn’t.

When they’re holding the phone

• Install it first. Opened from the home screen, the app runs fullscreen with your name and icon and no address bar; a browser tab shows its link across the top. On iPhone, open the link in Safari, then Share → Add to Home Screen; on Android, open it in Chrome, then ⋮ → Install app.
• Your Edit button stays out of the shot. In the installed app it’s hidden while you film. Holding two fingers still on the screen for a moment brings it back for five seconds, and one finger never does, so a friend’s thumb resting on the glass can’t surface it. The first time it appears in an installed app it comes with a hint saying so. On iPhone the home-screen app doesn’t share Safari’s sign-in, so the first two-finger hold asks for your email instead; sign in once with the code and Edit appears. Do this before you roll. In a browser tab it never hides.
• Know what the free tier shows. Free apps carry a visible Pozer mark. A friend who spots it is in on the joke early, so decide whether it’s your reveal or something to remove. Pro at US$4.99/wk or US$12.99/mo removes it.
• Expect them to wander, and watch the strip. Every tab opens and agrees with your figures. The strip at the top also lists Roth IRA, Joint and Custodial by default, each holding a little of the same stocks, and History lists the purchases that built the account. If your character has one account, clear Other accounts in the editor. Pulling down on Investing turns a refresh spinner. It never changes a typed price; live prices update on their own.
• Silence the phone. A real message sliding down mid-prank breaks it, and it can show them something private.

The reveal, and the reset

End it on camera. Tell them, show them the mark or the Edit screen, and keep that moment in the cut: a prank video without its reveal is a video of someone being lied to. Then ask before you post it. The person on the other end of the phone should get a say in whether their face goes out.

Every order you place is saved in the app on that phone, so if you close it and open it again, the share counts and buying power are where the last take left them, until you publish a change, which replaces the take the next time the app opens. Before the next take, hold two fingers on the screen to bring back Edit (on iPhone, sign in the first time), tap it, then tap Reset to published values, and the app reloads with the numbers you published.

The losing version: the “I lost all our money” prank

A screen full of gains only has to be believed. A screen showing a huge loss has to be believed for under a minute, and then everyone in the room has to be fine. The limits at the top say to keep the claim on your own imaginary money, and a loss prank pushes against that, so it runs on a shorter fuse: the reveal comes in the same room, in the same scene, within a minute or two, on someone who knows you well. They never leave, never pick up their own phone, never act on what they’ve seen. It lands best when the money is yours to lose; once it’s “ours”, halve the fuse.

Skip it with anyone who gets anxious about money, in a home under real financial strain (a debt, a missed payment, a job at risk), and whenever children can hear. Don’t run it by text, call or screenshot: you can’t see their face, and you can’t stop them phoning the bank or a parent. And the screen is a prop, never a reason. Nobody is asked for money because of it, and it isn’t evidence of anything: not for a lender, a landlord or a court, and not to explain where real money went.

Neither the total nor the Today line is a field. Both are worked out from Positions and Buying power, so build the loss backwards from the sentence you’ll say:

1. Pick the sum you’ll say out loud. Here, thirty-eight thousand.
2. Set Prices to Type my own, and put it all in one invented stock. Remove the other rows and the options. A spread of large companies doesn’t lose most of its value in a morning; one small stock can. A real ticker can be checked on their own phone in ten seconds, so make one up and search it first, in case it’s somebody’s listing. This guide uses PKLZ.
3. Set yesterday’s price and today’s. Say $2.71 and $0.31: type 0.31 in Price and −88.56 in Day %, which is 0.31 ÷ 2.71, less one, as a percentage.
4. Shares are the sum divided by yesterday’s price. 14,000 at $2.71 is $37,940.00. Type 2.71 in Average cost as well, so the stock’s Total return counts the same money.
5. Leave scraps in Buying power, to the cent. $61.18, not $0.00 and not $50.00.

Investing now reads $4,401.18, ▼ $33,597.06 (88.42%) Today. Add the two and you’re back at $37,998.24, the number you said. Tap PKLZ and its page agrees: $0.31, ▼ $2.40 (88.56%) Today, over 14,000 shares with a Market value of $4,340.00 and a Total return of −$33,600.00. A friend who flicks through the windows finds the same morning, because 1W to ALL all end at today’s value: 1W reads ▼ $33,597.05 (88.42%) Past week and, with the Average cost set, ALL reads ▼ $33,600.00 (88.42%) All time. Stop short of zero, though. At a Price of $0.00 there’s no previous close to work back to, so the loss drops out of the Today line; a few cents reads as a wipeout and still adds up.

• “Can you read me the number at the top? I can’t look.” For a partner. They hold the phone and say it out loud, which beats anything you could say. Let them reach the Today line, then ask which stock it is. Tapping the row opens the stock’s page, where the Company field, which Investing never shows, is the big title. Type the reveal into it: this guide’s is Gotcha Holdings. Keep it short; a long name wraps onto a second line and is then cut off. In the next two, the stock’s page is on screen before the reveal, so give Company a plain name for those.
• “I’m getting out. Watch.” You keep the phone. Tap PKLZ, then Trade, Sell and Sell all PKLZ, tap Review and swipe up. The screen floods orange-red while it says Sending order…, then a card reads PKLZ order completed: 14,000 of 14,000 shares sold and a Total credit of $4,340.00. It stays until you tap Done, so turn the phone round on that line: thirty-eight thousand in, four thousand three hundred out. That’s where you tell them.
• “I can win it back.” The worst thing to say next, and the smallest tap. Tap Trade, then Buy, then Dollars to switch the ticket to shares, and type 197. Its Estimated cost reads $61.07, and that is the reveal: you’re winning it back with sixty-one dollars. Type 200 instead and the account can’t cover it: the line under Buy PKLZ turns orange-red and Review stays dim.

Leave alerts off for this one: the app’s alerts only announce gains, and each one raises a stock’s price when the app is next on screen. Then decide the last line before the first. A minute or two is the ceiling, and three things end it sooner: they reach for their own phone, they offer money or start working out what to sell, or they go quiet instead of loud. Say it plainly (it’s a prop, nothing happened to the money) and show them: the Company title, or Edit and a price changing under your thumb. Don’t cut on the scream, ask before you post it, and don’t run it on the same person twice.

What ends a prank early

1. A buy bigger than your buying power, so the ticket turns orange-red and won’t go to Review.
2. A round buying power where a real one would have cents.
3. A real company’s ticker at a typed price its followers know is wrong.
4. A crash planned on live prices, on a day the market went up.
5. A loss typed all the way to $0.00, so it drops out of the Today line.
6. A friend in a Roth IRA or a Joint account your character has never mentioned.
7. Last take’s orders still in the account, so the shares don’t match the story.
8. A browser tab instead of the installed app: an address bar, and an Edit button that never hides.

Trading prank app, terminal or simulator: what this is

The same prank gets searched for under several names, and the app answers to each a little differently.

• A trading prank app. What you film is a phone screen: Investing, with the total, the Today line, a chart and your holdings, and a page for each stock and option. It’s laid out for a phone held upright, and its figures follow the market or, with typed prices, never change by themselves. It opens from a link like a website, as described above.
• A terminal with candles and an order book. If that’s the prank you pictured, rather than a stock account, it’s Pozer’s crypto futures app, and the fake trading screen guide covers filming it.
• A trading prank simulator. Only as far as the taps go: an order fills, a card confirms it and the share count changes. It isn’t a practice simulator. Prices can follow the market, but the money is whatever you typed, a buy fills instantly at the price on screen, and nothing is won or lost. Fake trading app or paper trading sets the two side by side.