cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49878453
Solo project I’ve been building this month, wanted to share here. The rules:
You get $10,000 and two secret years of real S&P 500 history, drawn from 1928 to 2019 (daily data, dividends included; your cash earns T-bill rates while you hide). One button: BUY or SELL. Your opponent is a couch. It buys at the start and never moves.
Every finished game is audited by 1,000 monkeys. It’s a permutation test 1,000 replays with your same time in the market and same number of trades, on random days. Beat 90% of the monkeys and your win is stamped TIMED THE MARKET. Anything less is stamped LUCKY, in red ink, on your settlement document.
About 84,000 games have been played so far. The couch has won 63% of them. Roughly 1 game in 9 ends in a win that survives the monkey audit.
There’s also a daily hand, same secret window for everyone, streaks, and a public ledger of humanity vs the couch.
If you have time, I’d love feedback, and I will answer any methodology questions, thanks!
I beat 9/10 monkeys! Damn I’m good, I should do this for real!
I fuckin did it!
first and best use of this meme. i should think of some easter eggs related to this… congrats and hope you liked it (was a nice couch)
it was an excellent couch. before I wrecked it!
not the same couch, cousins actually…
Spamming the trade buttons seems to be a good strategy
Small request, can you add the couch’s win pct next to the number of games it has won? I’m lazy
Thanks!
done, refresh a few times to see it
Nice! Thanks so much!
no problem, good idea, never got around to it
It’s a little scary to learn that the reason the stock market graphs are always so jagged minute to minute through the day is because of people like these.
there’s opportunity in trading. but to assume you’ll get the benefit is very similar to assuming you’ll beat the casino. it’s possible, but unlikely, especially in the long term.
ironic that you say you’ll lose in the long term, given that investing long term in an index fund is one of the safest ways to invest.
yeah, that’s the whole point of the game. “trading” is the one that will not work in the long term. staying in the index fund is the good option.
The loss on this case is “relative to an index fund”
I won. Does that mean I should start betting on stocks? Ok.
well, go easy i guess…
I played maybe 15 games. I won one in 99th percentile and lost one in like 40th.
You main visual is the market line, but I would make the main visual the competing lines of you vs couch, whether that’s bars or also graphed on the market. Otherwise, you’re sort of burying the mental image you want people to take away.
There’s also times where the market went completely south, so I did nothing, and got the “enlightened” position.
It’s a neat micro-game, but it comes off as preachy. Maybe that’s your intent, but being preachy can really turn people off. That maybe not your intent.
the two lines are certainly harder/confusing to follow, i preferred the absolute numbers at the top. the preachy thing is certainly a choice, i do want to make a point with this. the whole thing is based on that tone of voice. i hear you, it’ll turn some people off and i think i’m ok with it. appreciate the honest feedback.
Is your point here that holding assets over a long period of time always pays off more than selling high and buying low?
There is really no strategy to this, I just waited it out and the highest point was at the end, as was to be expected, never mind compounded interest over recurring investments or portfolio diversification.
Also I don’t understand why the other player is a couch?
at the core it, it’s a fun little game and not much more a lot of people do “chart reading” to predict the market and this kind of pokes fun at that
the idea is trying to time the market (whether buying or selling) is very hard and the s&p500 usually wins over the mid-to-long run
and the other playing a couch is just to show how little of an effort it takes to make more money than trading - an inanimate object in an index fund can outperform you.
I think you should spend a few more sentences selling the couch to players: “It doesn’t buy. It doesn’t sell. It just holds on to the stocks it already has.”
Or something like that.
