FTS interactive markets let you construct many different types of virtual worlds.  As a result, the definition of trials and periods in relation to the time period spanned is specific to each trading case's economy.  The description provided in this section refers to the demonstration case B02.  In the previous topic you learned that one trading trial covers three calendar years and consists of three periods.  Each year is referred to as one period.  In a period the first day of the year is traded and then all positions are held constant while calendar time moves forward to year end and all cash flows are realized and accounted for.  On the above trading screen the time remaining in the trading day is denoted by "Time Left" and this drops down to zero when the trading day ends and now calendar time moves forward to the end of year 1.

Year End Cash Flows in B02:  A specific sequence of events is realized.  First, interest accrued or owed from the end of day 1 cash balance is realized.  In the above screen if you ended the period with the cash balance of 10,000 you would earn 10,000*0.04 = 400 in interest.  Second, the end of year cash payments per security are realized and displayed in the Payoff Column.  The total cash, cash payment times the number of securities you hold, is automatically added or subtracted from your cash account.  For example, in the above screen this is 10*100 units = 1000 for the CpBond.  The remaining rows also correspond to the case description which in the current example implies that Zero 1 pays 100 at the end of year 1 and nothing thereafter, Zero 2 pays 100 at end of year 2 and nothing in any other year and finally Zero 3 pays 100 at the end of year 3 and nothing for years 1 and 2.  As a result, if you ended the period with 500 units of Zero 1 then you would receive 500*100 = 50,000 added to your cash account.  Assuming no change to the above position your total end of year 1 cash would equal 10000 + 400 interest + 1000 from coupon payments + 50,000 from the maturing 500 units of the Zero 1 which equals 61400 as depicted in the screen below:

The end of three periods denotes the end of a trial.  All cash flow realizations occur as previously described.  For example, the only two remaining securities are the Coupon Bond which pays it's coupon plus face (= 110) and the Zero 3 bond which pays 100.  Now your entire position has been converted to cash.  

Each subsequent trial is independent but works in the same way as described above.  The problem facing the trading crowd each trial is to discover prices for each of the securities being traded and running repeated independent trials allow the trading crowd to go down the learning curve with respect to the relevant finance concepts.