BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE BOND MASSACRE

Could You Have Timed the 1994 Bond Massacre?

THE WINDOW: OCT 1, 1993 TO SEP 28, 1995 · 504 TRADING DAYS

The Fed surprised everyone in February 1994 and bonds had their worst year in decades. Stocks barely noticed. The couch ended with $13,454. Only 21.4% of 1,489 players beat it.

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

What the couch did

ENDED WITH$13,454 (+34.5%)

WORST DRAWDOWN-9% by Apr 4, 1994

WORST SINGLE DAY-2.3% Feb 4, 1994

BEST SINGLE DAY+2.1% Apr 5, 1994

CASH INSTEAD (T-BILLS)+9.6%

What happened

October 1993. Rates are low, the economy is recovering, and nobody expects the Fed to move. On February 4, 1994 it raises rates for the first time in five years. Then again, and again, seven times in a year. The bond market has its worst year in a generation. Orange County goes bankrupt.

Stocks wobble. The deepest drawdown in the whole window is 9%. Then 1995 arrives and the market starts the run that becomes the dot-com bubble. The couch finishes with $13,454, +34.5%.

Every headline in this window was about rates. The couch does not read rates.

What the players did

GAMES FROM THIS YEAR1,489

BEAT THE COUCH21.4%

CERTIFIED SKILL12.0%

MEDIAN TRADES5

MEDIAN TIME IN MARKET62%

Player figures cover every game whose window started in 1993, 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

21.4% of 1,489 players beat the couch, and the median player finished -4.8% against it. This is a window full of reasons to be careful and almost no damage to avoid. Every reason was real. None of them was expensive enough to be worth acting on.

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

Frequently asked

What happened in the 1994 bond market crash?

The Federal Reserve raised rates seven times starting February 4, 1994, and bonds had one of their worst years on record. Stocks fell only 9% at the worst in this window.

Should you sell stocks when the Fed raises rates?

Not on this evidence. A couch holding from Oct 1, 1993 through the 1994 hikes ended with $13,454. In windows starting in 1993, only 21.4% of players beat it.

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.