Fantasy finance

Have a knack for picking winners, but no cash to follow through?

That hasn't stopped you from setting up a winning fantasy baseball team, so why should it stop you from playing the stock market.

The Motley Fool, the Alexandria, Va.-based investment advice services company, released Caps in free public beta this week. Caps is an online application that allows players to pick stocks, rate whether they will outperform or underperform the S&P 500, give a time frame for their prediction, and then watch what happens.

Picks can be made at any time for NYSE, Nasdaq and Amex stocks, as well as a few others. Those chosen "after the bell" will be picked at the market opening price.

The Motley Fool also uses Caps to track the success rate of predictions made by famous Wall Street analysts, like TheStreet.com founder Jim Cramer, as well as the performance of more than 100 investment firms. Picks from the Motley Fool's own staff are also followed.

Caps allows you to compare the success of professional stock-pickers and analysts alongside amateurs.

A Caps rating, a calculation based on both accuracy and return rates on good picks, is given to each player, who is elevated or demoted to different levels of expertise based on that score. Each player gets a jester cap icon (also the Motley Fool logo) that changes color depending on his or her level of success.

Players can leave public notes alongside their picks, giving reasons why they believe a stock will rise or fall, and rate companies on a star system of 1 to 5. There is no math involved (for those of you who are wondering) because the application does all of the heavy lifting.

The atmosphere is fun, with reasons for picks ranging from serious technical predictions to the less technical--liking a certain brand of computer, for instance.

The purpose of the service is to help people who can afford to play the market track their investments, and teach the rest of us how to invest in a safer environment than day-trading with the family savings.

It may also finally allow people to see how much of the market is gambling and how much of it is science.