BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE BOTTOM
THE WINDOW: JUL 8, 1932 TO JUL 25, 1934 · 504 TRADING DAYS
July 8, 1932 was the bottom of the Great Depression. The couch turned $10,000 into $22,600 over the next two years. Only 34.8% of 1,082 players beat it.
THE COUCH'S $10,000, DAY BY DAY, REAL DAILY DATA
July 8, 1932. The Dow closed at 41.22, down about 89% from 1929. It was the single best day to buy American stocks in the history of American stocks, and every person alive that day was certain the country was finished.
The couch bought and held. Two years later: $22,600, up +126.0%. On March 15, 1933, the day the banks reopened after the national bank holiday, the market gained 16.6% in one session, still the biggest single day in the series.
Note the drawdown anyway: 39% inside the best two years the market has ever produced. Even a historic recovery hands you a stretch that feels like the end of the world.
Player figures cover every game whose window started in 1932, not only the exact hand above, and come from the run export of August 28, 2026. A win counts as SKILL only if it beats 90% of 1,000 monkeys replaying the same window with the same trade count and the same time in the market. Across the ten windows in this archive players beat the couch 48.6% of the time, because these are the famous years. Across the whole ledger the couch wins 62% of 120,800 games.
Only 34.8% of 1,082 players beat the couch here, and the median player finished -4.1% against it. This is the shape of the whole archive in one window: when the market goes up, every day you spend in cash is a day you pay for. There was nothing to time. There was only the fear that made you sell, and the market did not care.
Play this exact windowfree, no signup, about two minutes. Same two years, same data, no hindsight.July 8, 1932. The Dow closed at 41.22, roughly 89% below its September 1929 peak. In this game a couch that bought that day and never traded turned $10,000 into $22,600 over the following two years.
Almost nobody does, and the game shows why the attempt costs more than it pays. In windows starting in 1932 only 34.8% of players beat a couch that simply held.
Method: real S&P 500 daily total returns, dividends included, calibrated to Damodaran's annual series; cash earns 3-month T-bills. The same data the game deals. See the evidence page for sources, and the full ledger for the whole ledger.
BEAT THE COUCH · the game · the archive · the evidence · the data · Privacy · Terms
Not financial advice. The couch is not licensed for anything.