BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE VOLCKER SQUEEZE
THE WINDOW: JUN 2, 1980 TO MAY 28, 1982 · 504 TRADING DAYS
Short-term rates near 20%. From June 1980 the couch made +11.3% in two years. Cash made +26.8%. 68.9% of 1,583 players beat the couch, one of the best human results in the archive.
THE COUCH'S $10,000, DAY BY DAY, REAL DAILY DATA
June 1980. Paul Volcker is running the Federal Reserve and has decided to break inflation whatever it costs. Short-term interest rates head toward 20%. Mortgages are unaffordable, homebuilders mail pieces of lumber to the Fed in protest, and the economy goes into back-to-back recessions.
The couch buys stocks and holds. Two years later: $11,126, +11.3%, after falling 18% by Mar 8, 1982. Treasury bills, the thing you hold when you are hiding, paid +26.8% over the same two years.
It is the one stretch in modern history where cash was not the cost of timing the market. It was the prize.
Player figures cover every game whose window started in 1980, 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.
68.9% of 1,583 players beat the couch, and 16.9% passed the monkey audit. That is one of the best human showings in the archive, and almost none of it is market reading. It is arithmetic: when cash pays double digits, every day spent out of stocks is a good day. The couch has no idea interest rates exist.
Play this exact windowfree, no signup, about two minutes. Same two years, same data, no hindsight.In this window, yes. From Jun 2, 1980, 3-month T-bills returned +26.8% over two years, while a buy-and-hold couch returned +11.3%.
Better than almost anywhere else. In windows starting in 1980, 68.9% of players beat a couch that never traded.
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.