Hello,

I made beatthecouch.com in July and it’s basically a game where you try to beat the S&P 500 and buy/sell when you want. Your opponent is a couch. It buys on day one and never sells.

Now over 100K+ games later, the hypothesis stands: it’s not wise to try to trade and time the market. Here’s the original data from the actual games itself.

Source: the game’s own database, every completed game Jul 12 to Aug 28. Tool: Python and matplotlib. Market data: S&P 500 daily total returns 1928 to 2019.

thanks!

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    13 days ago

    Isn’t this essentially a lesson that the market goes up on average?

    Of course you can’t expect to beat the average trend with uninformed guesses. Do people actually trade like that?

    • blitzen@lemmy.caEnglish
      91·
      13 days ago

      Generally, you can’t expect to beat the market even with informed guesses. That’s the point.

      • emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        21·
        12 days ago

        That’s isn’t the point though, because that’s not what the game shows. That might be the point the creator is trying to make, but it’s not what the game is.