BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE 1974 BOTTOM
THE WINDOW: OCT 3, 1974 TO SEP 29, 1976 · 504 TRADING DAYS
October 3, 1974 was the bottom of a bear market that cut stocks almost in half. The couch bought that day and turned $10,000 into $18,052. Only 28.3% of 1,460 players beat it.
THE COUCH'S $10,000, DAY BY DAY, REAL DAILY DATA
October 3, 1974. The S&P 500 has lost close to half its value since January 1973. Oil is embargoed, inflation is in double digits, Nixon resigned two months ago. It is the worst bear market since the 1930s, and on this day it ends. Nobody knows.
The couch buys the exact bottom and holds. Six days later the market jumps one of its biggest days in years. Two years after it sat down the couch has $18,052, up +80.5%. Cash earned +11.8%, which in any other window would be a good result.
This is the sequel to the 1973 hand in this archive, and the mirror of it. Same economy, same headlines, opposite answer.
Player figures cover every game whose window started in 1974, 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.
28.3% of 1,460 players beat the couch. The median player finished -5.1% behind it. After two years of a market that only fell, the instinct to sell every rally is fully trained, and this is the window that charges for it. Compare the 1973 page, where the same instinct won.
Play this exact windowfree, no signup, about two minutes. Same two years, same data, no hindsight.On October 3, 1974. A couch that bought that day and held two years turned $10,000 into $18,052 (+80.5%).
Almost nobody does. In windows starting in 1974, only 28.3% of players beat a couch that simply bought and held through the recovery.
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 daily hands · the evidence · the data · Privacy · Terms
Not financial advice. The couch is not licensed for anything.