BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE 2009 BOTTOM

Could You Have Bought the 2009 Bottom?

THE WINDOW: FEB 2, 2009 TO JAN 31, 2011 · 504 TRADING DAYS

February 2009. The couch bought five weeks before the March 9 low and took another 22% hit first. Two years later: $16,174. Only 23.4% of 1,688 players beat it.

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

What the couch did

ENDED WITH$16,174 (+61.7%)

WORST DRAWDOWN-22% by Mar 9, 2009

WORST SINGLE DAY-4.9% Feb 10, 2009

BEST SINGLE DAY+7.1% Mar 23, 2009

CASH INSTEAD (T-BILLS)+0.3%

What happened

February 2, 2009. The banks are being rescued one weekend at a time, unemployment is climbing every month, and the market has already fallen by half. The couch buys, and keeps falling: another 22% to the low on March 9, 2009.

Two weeks after the bottom, the Treasury announces a plan to buy the banks' toxic assets and the market has one of its best days on record. Then it simply keeps going. A flash crash in May 2010 drops the market in minutes and nobody remembers it a month later.

The couch finishes with $16,174, up +61.7%. Cash earned +0.3%. Rates were at zero.

What the players did

GAMES FROM THIS YEAR1,688

BEAT THE COUCH23.4%

CERTIFIED SKILL14.8%

MEDIAN TRADES5

MEDIAN TIME IN MARKET58%

Player figures cover every game whose window started in 2009, 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

23.4% of 1,688 players beat the couch. The median player finished -8.1% behind. This is the window everybody claims they would have bought. The ledger says most players got out in the last leg down, and were still waiting for a retest when the market was already up by half.

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

Frequently asked

When was the bottom of the 2008 financial crisis stock market?

March 9, 2009. A couch that bought on Feb 2, 2009, five weeks earlier, and held two years ended with $16,174 (+61.7%).

Did people time the 2009 market bottom?

Very few. In windows starting in 2009, only 23.4% of players beat a couch that held through the bottom.

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.