EARNING
How do I earn money?
There are two ways to earn money: predict well or invite friends. You can do both at the same time.
Before you can earn money you will need to register your email and phone number (Why?).

Earning money by predicting well
Every prediction you make will win or lose points. All of these predictions are summed together in your total score
At the end of each week if your total score is greater than the weekly threshold, currently set to 20,000 points, you will earn money. The larger your total score is, the more money you earn. It's really that simple.
Then, after prizes are paid, we reduce everyone's total score by the same small percentage. This means that no-one gains or loses relative to each other, but it gives new-comers a chance to catch up by continuing to play well.
The weekly pot gets larger if more people do well because we add money for every person who makes the grade that week. We want to encourage more people to join and play well.

Earning money by inviting friends
If you invite anyone to join the app and they predict well, they will earn money. In fact it's exactly those kinds of talented people we want - so we will give you 20% of their income as a bonus, forever! They don't lose anything but you can gain a lot!
There is no limit to the number of people you can invite. To invite someone, just have them click on your personal "Supporter Link" before they join. You can share it anyway you want: chat, mail, FB, etc. You can find your Supporter Link in the application itself, in the Social tab.
Learn more in the Supporters section

How do I withdraw my earnings?
Just click on the button on your Account tab to withdraw all your earnings to date. You may withdraw to any of these services:
PayPal
Skrill
Bitcoin
It generally takes about ten working days to receive the money after sending the request. There is a minimum withdrawal of US$ 30.00. Note that the services may take off some transfer fees. If you want to avoid these fees please use Bitcoin!
To protect our service from cheaters and people who would spoil it for everyone we will not allow multiple accounts to withdraw to the same address on any of these services. So if user Jane has withdrawn to jane@me.com on PayPal then no-one else will later be able to withdraw to that same PayPal account.
PREDICTING
How long does a game last?
As long or as short as you want! Once you've made your prediction you can stay and watch your score change as people around the world buy or sell, moving the price closer or further from your target. There is no need to hang around though if you're busy: you can simply log back in anytime to see where it is, or ask to be notified when the market hits your levels.
All games must follow the underlying market's trading hours and we do stop all games on a Friday night.
Asset
Opens
Closes
Bitcoin
Friday 9:30pm UTC
Friday 9:00pm UTC
FX (common currencies)
Sunday 11:00pm UTC
Friday 9:00pm UTC
Stock Indices
Sunday 11:00pm UTC
Friday 9:00pm UTC
There are usually a couple of half-day breaks at the end of each year too.

Can I kill the app?
Once you've started your prediction, it will be handled by our servers. So you don't need to leave the app running - it will still be earning points even if you are offline.

Why do games stop on a Friday night?
This is when most financial markets stop, so we chose this point to close your positions and make a definitive total score for the week.
In the future we plan to mark your positions to market, which would mean that your positions can be left ready for the next week. However you won't be able to start or stop positions while the underlying market is closed - just like the real markets!

I tried the tutorial in the app and I still don't understand how to use it
Oops, sorry about that! It's really a lot simpler than you might imagine. We made a 3 minute video that explains how to use Spark Profit.
The key points are that
You first set a profit price and then set a loss price
When the market moves it will eventually hit one of those prices: whichever it hits first determines whether you win or lose points in that game
The closer you set a price the more likely it is to be hit but the less points you can win (or lose).
You can also stop games at any time and take a smaller profit or loss.
If the market itself closes (as it does every weekend) thenit's just as if you stopped the game yourself and you will receive the smaller profit or loss
And then also:Starting a new game costs some points
But amendments are free
Detailed ExplanationThe blue line shows how the price of the market changed until now. You simply need to guess where it's going next. The timescale for your prediction can be as long or short as you like, up until the next market close. (Market closes are shown as a vertical black bar on the graph). So if you think the price will go up, click on the right side of the screen above the current price.
You must pay some of your points to make a new prediction, but new joiners get a discount. You will see the cost once you've clicked, before you send your prediction.
Once you have clicked above the current price it will also show a green horizontal line. This is your profit line - when the market hits it, that game ends and you get a payout. You must choose where to put your profit line. The closer it is to the current price, the more likely it is to pay out but it will pay less points. Conversely if you set a price that is far away you can win lots of points if you're right... but it's less likely to make it that far, and you risk it going the other way before you can win. This is just the way markets work! Ideally you'd want to set the profit line at the farthest price that you believe the market will reach before it starts to turn around.
Once you're happy with the profit line, click on the "Next" button at the bottom of the screen. Now you will see an additional red "loss" line. It behaves in a very similar way to the profit line, except that you will lose the given number of points if it gets hit first. You can set the loss line close to avoid losing lots of points - but you are more likely to have it happen. Or you can set your loss line far away so that it probably won't get hit... but if it does you will lose a lot of points!
Once you're happy with where the profit and loss lines are, click "Start" to send the information to our servers and start the game. Now you just need to come back later to see how you've done.
SCORING
How do scores work?
Each prediction you make uses our advanced trading simulator to generate trading returns based on the actual market movement. Those trading returns, after subtracting realistic costs, are converted into the score you see.
Thus each game has several elements to the score:
There is an initial cost to make a prediction. This corresponds to our estimation of your transaction costs.
You can win or lose points according to whether the market did as you predicted
There can be a small bonus for certain games if you were right and didn't stop or amend halfway through. This happens when the initial estimated transaction costs are higher than we ended up needing to pay.
It's also worth knowing that your total score will never go below zero, no matter how much you lose in a single game. So if you have a bad run, or are simply new and learning, it's easy to pick yourself up and start off again.

Do scores get wiped at the end of the week?
No, we don't reset your score at the end of the week. In fact we carry over 95% of your score to the next week, to help you maintain a higher score and earn more.
For example, if you had 50,000 points at the end of the week you would earn money on those points, then we'd carry over a score of 47,500 to start the next week.

How do scores translate into cash?
We start the explanation in Earning money by predicting well. The more points you have the more you earn. For instance this week's top player has 1,866,299 points and will earn $11.35.

 
If that seems like a lot of points to make in one week don't forget: we carry over 95% of your score to the next week -- even if you don't make any more predictions! So the trick is to build up a big score, week by week, and then keep it topped up with the occasional prediction.
The upshot of all this is that if you double your score, you will more than double your income, assuming nothing else changes.