Money... Recessions

So, we were talking about what to do if you have a small surplus of dollars. This has become especially difficult, given all the gloom and doom talk of recessions and everything. Lifehacker linked to a thread about what is the smartest thing to do with money given the uncertainty of the market. This got me thinking about the options that are available...

Our idea was that was should perhaps try to invest "fake" dollars into some stocks, mutual funds, or what have you, for a month and see who can take $1,000 (or maybe $10k) the furthest given any options. An important caveat, I think, would be to include fees for buying, selling, and maintaining an account with which ever online stock site we choose (I only know of etrade's rates, and they're not cheap when dealing with smaller volume trades). It seems like the best way to do this is to use either Google finance or Yahoo finance and create a "portfolio" and track it for a while. We would each have to tabulate separately the money that isn't currently represented by a stock, and the fees, etc, we have "spent." Is anyone up to this? I think it would be interesting.