BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE KENNEDY SLIDE
THE WINDOW: NOV 1, 1961 TO OCT 31, 1963 · 504 TRADING DAYS
From November 1961 the market fell 27% in seven months, crashed in a day in May 1962, then shrugged off the Cuban Missile Crisis. 45.2% of 1,562 players beat the couch.
THE COUCH'S $10,000, DAY BY DAY, REAL DAILY DATA
November 1961. The market is near a record and priced like it. Over the next seven months it slides 27%, with a one-day crash on May 28, 1962, the worst single day in years. The next day it bounced back almost as far.
In October 1962 came the Cuban Missile Crisis, thirteen days when nuclear war was a real possibility. The market had already done most of its falling. It dipped, and rallied as soon as the crisis ended.
The couch sat through both and ended the window with $11,498, +15.0%. Cash earned +5.9%. The scariest event of the decade was not the bottom. The boring slide before it was.
Player figures cover every game whose window started in 1961, 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.
45.2% of 1,562 players beat the couch, and only 7.4% passed the monkey audit. The slide was real and stepping out was right for a while, but the recovery came fast and early, and most of the people who got out were still out when it did. The median player finished +0.1% against the couch.
Play this exact windowfree, no signup, about two minutes. Same two years, same data, no hindsight.The 1962 stock market decline. From the late-1961 top the market fell 27%, including a one-day crash on May 28, 1962, before recovering.
Not really. Most of the decline was already over by October 1962; the market dipped briefly and rallied once the crisis ended. A couch that held from Nov 1, 1961 ended with $11,498.
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.
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Not financial advice. The couch is not licensed for anything.