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!

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[–] 28 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

Years ago, I managed a high-end restaurant. And twice a year a local brokerage firm would rent out the entire restaurant (to the tune of about $30,000) and treat their best clients for dinner.

I always asked the brokers what they invested their own money in. The answer was always the same, an index fund.

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