BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE MELT-UP

Could You Have Beaten 2012? Statistically, No.

THE WINDOW: JAN 3, 2012 TO JAN 6, 2014 · 504 TRADING DAYS

A 10% worst drawdown and the couch up +49.1%. Only 4.8% of 973 players beat it, the second worst human result in the archive.

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

What the couch did

ENDED WITH$14,907 (+49.1%)

WORST DRAWDOWN-10% by Jun 1, 2012

WORST SINGLE DAY-2.5% Jun 20, 2013

BEST SINGLE DAY+2.5% Jan 2, 2013

CASH INSTEAD (T-BILLS)+0.2%

What happened

Post-crisis, quantitative easing running, everybody still braced for the next shoe. From January 2012 the market climbs +49.1% over two years and the worst thing that happens to you is a 10% dip.

The worst single day in two years is 2.5%. There is no crash. There is no bottom to buy. There is only a slow, boring, relentless line going up while the commentary insists it cannot last.

The couch turns $10,000 into $14,907.

What the players did

GAMES FROM THIS YEAR973

BEAT THE COUCH4.8%

CERTIFIED SKILL4.3%

MEDIAN TRADES4

MEDIAN TIME IN MARKET53%

Player figures cover every game whose window started in 2012, not only the exact hand above, and come from the run export of August 28, 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 ten windows in this archive players beat the couch 48.6% of the time, because these are the famous years. Across the whole ledger the couch wins 62% of 120,800 games.

The read

4.8% of 973 players beat it. The median player finished -15.1% behind. Players in this window donated $2,088,686 in game dollars to the market. Between 1995 and 2012 the archive makes the same point twice, sixteen years apart, in two completely different economies: the windows that punish timing hardest are the ones where nothing frightening happens at all.

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

Frequently asked

Was 2012 a good year to be in the stock market?

Very. A couch buying in January 2012 and holding two years gained +49.1%, ending with $14,907, with a maximum drawdown of only 10%.

Why do market timers underperform in quiet markets?

There is no fall to sidestep, so time in cash is pure cost. In windows starting in 2012 only 4.8% 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.

← 2008, the crisisAll ten windows

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Not financial advice. The couch is not licensed for anything.