![[OC] People tried to beat the stock market 100K+ times in a simulation. They lost, a lot.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4f3baec5-843f-4b8a-b46d-e7b0237dc72f.png){kind=link}
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!
How come the couch wins, when it’s an exact tie? That seems to skew the result.
Because an exact tie means you could effectively also be the couch. In which case, a couch won, whether it was you or the couch.
Oh. Thanks for explaining that!
It’s not an official explanation, but that’s how I think of it, based on how statistical significance works in research.