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!
well, you were lucky your first time. now try to actually time it : )
Me 2 Couch 0
fair - still, if you get the monkey percentile (at the bottom) over 90, then it counts as timing the market and not just pure luck. but yeah, you made your money, so doesn’t matter how you made it : )