BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE POSTWAR CRASH

Could You Have Dodged the Forgotten Crash of 1946?

THE WINDOW: JAN 2, 1946 TO JAN 7, 1948 · 504 TRADING DAYS

The war was won, and the market fell anyway. From January 1946 the couch dropped 26% at the worst and ended at $9,599. 51.3% of 1,654 players beat it.

THE COUCH'S $10,000, DAY BY DAY, REAL DAILY DATA

What the couch did

ENDED WITH$9,599 (-4.0%)

WORST DRAWDOWN-26% by Oct 9, 1946

WORST SINGLE DAY-9.9% Sep 3, 1946

BEST SINGLE DAY+4.2% Dec 9, 1946

CASH INSTEAD (T-BILLS)+1.0%

What happened

January 1946. The war is over, the soldiers are coming home, and the market has just had a four-year run. Everybody expects either a boom or the Depression coming back. What they got was neither: a sharp break in the late summer and then two years of nothing.

The couch rode it down 26% by Oct 9, 1946. September 3, 1946 was one of the worst days of the decade. Two years after it bought, the couch had $9,599 of its $10,000. Cash earned +1.0%. A rare window where hiding was not punished.

Almost nobody remembers 1946. That is the point. A drop this size happens far more often than the famous ones, and it never comes with a name in advance.

What the players did

GAMES FROM THIS YEAR1,654

BEAT THE COUCH51.3%

CERTIFIED SKILL16.6%

MEDIAN TRADES4

MEDIAN TIME IN MARKET77%

Player figures cover every game whose window started in 1946, not only the exact hand above, and come from the run export of October 31, 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 thirty windows in this archive players beat the couch 39.2% of the time, because these are the famous years. Across the whole ledger the couch wins 62% of 120,800 games.

The read

51.3% of 1,654 players beat the couch, roughly a coin flip, and 16.6% passed the monkey audit. This is what a timing win looks like when it is real but small: the market went down and stayed flat, so being out was right, and the median player finished +1.5% against the couch. Nobody got rich. They just got a little less poor.

Play this exact windowfree, no signup, about two minutes. Same two years, same data, no hindsight.

Frequently asked

Was there a stock market crash after World War II?

Yes, in 1946. A couch that bought on Jan 2, 1946 fell 26% at the worst point and ended two years later with $9,599 of $10,000.

Did market timing work in 1946?

Modestly. 51.3% of players beat the couch in windows starting in 1946, and 16.6% passed the 1,000-monkey skill audit.

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.

← 1942, the war bottomAll thirty windows1954, the boom →

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Not financial advice. The couch is not licensed for anything.