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!

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[–] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

Fucking brilliant ! 👏👏

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  • [–] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    Interesting game. You could add crypto currencies for fun factor. Beating the couch in bitcoin trading could be an interesting challange

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  • [–] 14 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    The couch can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent.

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  • [–] 44 points 2 days ago (1 child)
  • [–] [S] 13 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    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)

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    These are always good counter arguments to technical analysis. But I’d love to see something where you get industry news surrounding the stocks and have to see if you can also trade based on the news and noise or if the couch wins there.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Wtf it's harder than I imagined

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    U r sure it's not "be at the couch"

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  • [–] 26 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)
  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Small request, can you add the couch’s win pct next to the number of games it has won? I’m lazy

    Thanks!

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  • [–] 8 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I beat 9/10 monkeys! Damn I'm good, I should do this for real!

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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I won. Does that mean I should start betting on stocks? Ok.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Spamming the trade buttons seems to be a good strategy

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    [–] 1 point 1 day ago*

    Maybe add a volume chart to measure market activity, a candle stick chart to see the intra day OHLC and a moving average line chart. Just to see if people fare better compared to just an end of day line chart.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    I would like a slider mode. It's very hard to do any sensible strategy with an all or nothing approach. If market goes up by 30% I want to progressively sell and vice versa

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    it's over two years so while not long term, it's not short either. lots of ups and downs. but i'm thinking of adding a career mode with 2x10 years, start with 10k, see where you end up kind of thing.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (2 children)

    As far as I can tell it only used stock that "won". In that scenario, beating the couch is hard luck. But stock that ends up on 0, you could win more easily.

    In real life I live off of that, so a couch won't always win 😋

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    it uses S&P500 which isn't necessarily winning stocks. although it wins over the long term, lots of losing years are included here.

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