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!

it was an excellent couch. before I wrecked it!
Well you can game volatile stocks and you can buy and sell whenever you feel like it. Stuff like Tesla you know they're gonna swing down or swing up because shit's just so manipulated
The loss in this case is "relative to an index fund"
Until OP implements short term cost basis
S&P historically grew at like 7% per year on averange. You're at constant disadvantage against couch
U r sure it's not "be at the couch"
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.
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.
Interesting game. You could add crypto currencies for fun factor. Beating the couch in bitcoin trading could be an interesting challange
Love it, tyu.
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.
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 😋
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.
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.
The example I always found in investing literature is that the best class of investor is "dead people", since they don't time the market. Hard to say which one makes the point better.
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Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
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I fuckin did it!
save