BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE CHRISTMAS MASSACRE
THE WINDOW: JUN 1, 2017 TO JUN 3, 2019 · 504 TRADING DAYS
Two scares in one year: the February 2018 volatility blow-up and a 19% slide into Christmas Eve. The couch held and ended with $11,849. 21.8% of 1,359 players beat it.
THE COUCH'S $10,000, DAY BY DAY, REAL DAILY DATA
June 2017. The calmest market in decades. Volatility is so low that people are betting on it staying low, and making money every week.
On February 5, 2018 that bet blows up in a single afternoon and the market drops 4%. In the autumn come tariffs, rate hikes and a slide that ends on Christmas Eve, the worst Christmas Eve on record: 19% from the top by Dec 24, 2018. On December 26 the market has its best day in almost a decade.
The couch sits through both and ends the window with $11,849, +18.5%.
Player figures cover every game whose window started in 2017, 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.
21.8% of 1,359 players beat the couch. The median player finished -4.0% behind it. The deepest point of the window was a holiday, and the best day came on the next trading day, so anybody who sold the bottom missed the bounce by one session. This is the most modern example in the archive of the oldest lesson in it.
Play this exact windowfree, no signup, about two minutes. Same two years, same data, no hindsight.The market fell 19% from its 2018 high to December 24, 2018, then had its best day in nearly a decade on December 26. A couch holding from Jun 1, 2017 ended with $11,849.
The February 5, 2018 collapse of products betting on low volatility, which dropped the market about 4% in a day. In windows starting in 2017, 21.8% of players beat a couch that held.
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.