Use Fantasy Portfolio to Improve Reality

This column was originally published on RealMoney on March 30 at 5:42 p.m. ET. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

Next week begins the game -- Beat the Street, click here and sign up now so you're ready from the get-go on April 2. I want to urge you to play the game because, as anyone who has read Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World, knows, I always thought that fantasy games were great ways to learn stocks. The discipline of putting down a stock and following it begets the research, and you can do the research without getting clocked for real money.

When I first set up our fantasy league at Cramer Berkowitz, everyone laughed. What was Cramer doing now, with his silly insistence on learning new stocks on paper. We started with a draft, which, I have to tell you, we did not do enough work on. Only after we had won the draft did the work begin. That was wrong, but then again, we didn't know how important it would be. We almost followed these stocks more than the ones we had millions bet on. We became obsessed with learning the stories, and the ones that graduated to our real portfolios -- the Red Hots, as I called them -- gave us fantastic performance.

Sure it's a game. And there is some nifty prize money associated with it (to be specific, $100,000). But I urge you to use the game as a way to get to know some stocks you wouldn't otherwise. I think it forces you to focus, and it forces you to think about what can go wrong, not just what can go right. ...