Poll

How did you score on the stock market game?

I outperformed the market!
25 (39.7%)
I underperformed the market!
29 (46%)
I matched the market!
9 (14.3%)

Total Members Voted: 56

Author Topic: Buy and Hold vs Market Timing: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market  (Read 6200 times)

CCCA

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Since people here seemed to enjoy the freedom calculator I made, I decided to try my hand at making a stock market timing game.  You start fully invested in the market and then try to sell and buy at the appropriate times in order to "beat" the market.  It's definitely hard to consistently beat the market, though it is, of course, possible.

I set up a poll so you can report your score more than once so we can get a distribution of scores. 
[Edit: I realized that you can't vote more than once, just that when you vote you can vote for more than one option].

Also any comments and suggestions you might have would be appreciated.

https://engaging-data.com/market-timing-game/

Made a few updates:
 - added a speed controller to change the speed at which the game runs
 - added an option to do a Monte Carlo simulation instead of using a historical period.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 11:56:21 PM by CCCA »

solon

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2018, 10:12:25 AM »
Love, love, love the War Games reference, and the only way to win the game!

GuitarStv

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2018, 10:15:45 AM »
I did nothing for 750 days and lost 17% of my money.  :P


Clearly need to pull my money out earlier and invest in buttcoin.

CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2018, 11:05:58 AM »
Love, love, love the War Games reference, and the only way to win the game!


thanks, I updated the title to make it accurate (I remembered it as "Do you want to play a game?" and not "Shall we play a game?")

solon

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2018, 11:19:06 AM »
Love, love, love the War Games reference, and the only way to win the game!


thanks, I updated the title to make it accurate (I remembered it as "Do you want to play a game?" and not "Shall we play a game?")

You're crossing it with Frozen. Do you want to build a snowman? Don't cross the streams.

CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #5 on: May 23, 2018, 11:51:10 AM »
Do people see an option to vote again, if you've already voted?  When I created the poll, I said let people vote more than once.  But when I look at the poll, since I voted, I can only see the results and edit the poll, but no choice to vote again.

Davnasty

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2018, 12:28:03 PM »
Do people see an option to vote again, if you've already voted?  When I created the poll, I said let people vote more than once.  But when I look at the poll, since I voted, I can only see the results and edit the poll, but no choice to vote again.

I think "let people vote more than once" means they can pick more than one option before they hit submit.

So they can both over and underperform!

CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #7 on: May 23, 2018, 12:33:45 PM »
Do people see an option to vote again, if you've already voted?  When I created the poll, I said let people vote more than once.  But when I look at the poll, since I voted, I can only see the results and edit the poll, but no choice to vote again.

I think "let people vote more than once" means they can pick more than one option before they hit submit.

So they can both over and underperform!


ah okay that makes sense. 

Dollar Slice

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #8 on: May 23, 2018, 12:50:00 PM »
Also any comments and suggestions you might have would be appreciated.

I would like it if the speed were adjustable or just slower. I like the idea, but I feel like I'm not actually buying and selling at the times I would like to because it just speeds past where I would have hit the button.

HPstache

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2018, 12:54:26 PM »
Also any comments and suggestions you might have would be appreciated.

I would like it if the speed were adjustable or just slower. I like the idea, but I feel like I'm not actually buying and selling at the times I would like to because it just speeds past where I would have hit the button.

Agreed.  The graph goes too quickly.

CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2018, 01:02:00 PM »
Also any comments and suggestions you might have would be appreciated.

I would like it if the speed were adjustable or just slower. I like the idea, but I feel like I'm not actually buying and selling at the times I would like to because it just speeds past where I would have hit the button.

Agreed.  The graph goes too quickly.


Okay, I slowed it down a bit.  I didn't want to make an individual cycle too long so I went with a faster speed, but let me know how it feels now.  I'll think about adding the speed control as well. 


thanks for the feedback.

LPG

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2018, 01:42:21 PM »
That game is awesome! Thanks for making and sharing it.

CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2018, 09:34:05 PM »
That game is awesome! Thanks for making and sharing it.


glad you enjoyed it.

PeachyStash

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #13 on: May 25, 2018, 03:14:27 AM »
Very interesting game and illustrative tool. Here's how I fared:



I was a little surprised to actually beat the market the first time I tried it. (Although I probably lucked out because I got a time period that roughly matched up with the financial crisis.) That being said, I'm not going to take my success at this game to indicate whether or not I'll be excellent at timing the stock market, but it's interesting. I'll make sure to share this.

Some suggestions to improve the game:
  • The graph goes a bit quickly for me. I think it ought to be slowed down a little bit more (about 5% or so).
  • This game is more of a reaction game that requires quick reactions. People who play those all the time are more likely to beat the market.
  • It would be interesting if we could have a randomly-generated scenario.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2018, 03:29:53 AM by PeachyStash »

Nudelkopf

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #14 on: May 25, 2018, 04:10:10 AM »
I used to play the stock market game when I was in high school (Australia). It was a good introduction to "what are shares" and "what are companies". But it didn't really hit home too much as a 14-15 year old.

CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #15 on: May 25, 2018, 09:34:21 AM »
Very interesting game and illustrative tool. Here's how I fared:



I was a little surprised to actually beat the market the first time I tried it. (Although I probably lucked out because I got a time period that roughly matched up with the financial crisis.) That being said, I'm not going to take my success at this game to indicate whether or not I'll be excellent at timing the stock market, but it's interesting. I'll make sure to share this.

Some suggestions to improve the game:
  • The graph goes a bit quickly for me. I think it ought to be slowed down a little bit more (about 5% or so).
  • This game is more of a reaction game that requires quick reactions. People who play those all the time are more likely to beat the market.
  • It would be interesting if we could have a randomly-generated scenario.
Good job on beating the market. It’s probably easiest as you found out during prolonged recessions. If the top really is in and you time if halfway decently you’ll do okay.
Thanks for the suggestions. When you say randomly generated you want something like a montecarlo (picking from a probability distribution?), is that correct?

PeachyStash

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #16 on: May 26, 2018, 03:13:54 AM »
Yes, a Monte Carlo simulation would be nice to have.

Raeon

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #17 on: May 26, 2018, 09:44:03 PM »
I like the idea, and I had fun playing it.  I only played 3 times.  I found that I did considerably better slowing it down by starting/pausing it and making extremely short term buy and sells to catch the shorter term swings than I did trying to truly time the market.  Trying to time it with no information about what's going on is definitely a losing proposition.
Being in it though is different I think.  Knowing there's a war going on, political scandals, corruption, etc... all those can have a lot of impact on your decisions in real life.  You can't get that from the game.  I'm not advocating that the average person should try to time the market.  I'm just saying that sometimes during the big events, it may be silly to buy/sell. 
You wouldn't buy stock the moment you heard someone has declared war on your country, you'd wait until at least one big wave of sells went through. After that I would say ease in with a portion a little bit at a time. 

inline five

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #18 on: May 27, 2018, 08:28:25 PM »
This would be better if you added screenable metrics like market avg PE etc.

Obviously in this game "beating" the market is pure luck since there is no actual data to pull from. Would be interesting to use historical data and try the same thing.

Bicycle_B

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #19 on: May 27, 2018, 09:54:41 PM »
I was curious to see what happened if I didn't sell.  Living vicariously since my real allocation is only about 70% stock.  Was saddened when it didn't tell me what period I drew, especially since in my case the market rose 15% in the first couple months, peaked around 30% after 13 months and fell to an 8% gain.  Why no info reward for those who hold?  Did I make a mistake?

kingxiaodi

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #20 on: May 28, 2018, 09:13:00 AM »
I was curious to see what happened if I didn't sell.  Living vicariously since my real allocation is only about 70% stock.  Was saddened when it didn't tell me what period I drew, especially since in my case the market rose 15% in the first couple months, peaked around 30% after 13 months and fell to an 8% gain.  Why no info reward for those who hold?  Did I make a mistake?

Look at PeachyStash's reply (#13). If you pull down the results tab above the game, it should show you the start date of the period you got (it's the 5th sentence: 'Your game used 3 years of market data starting on MM/DD/YY').

Noticed you said you never sold, so I tested that out to see if it made a difference. It still works. Here's my results paragraph:
Quote
Results: Your ending balance is $65,834. This is equal to the balance you would have had if you had stayed fully invested in the market for the entire period (3 years). You equalled the performance of the market because you didn't trade. Not that interesting, but probably the smartest move. Your game used 3 years of market data starting on 12/28/71. The market returned -34.2% during this period or -13.01% annually.

Bicycle_B

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #21 on: May 28, 2018, 10:20:26 AM »
Thanks!  I see it this time.

The second try blew my mind again because I basically doubled my money.  Teaching an even bigger lesson: When I first saw the graph soar like that, I thought, "That can't be real." Afterward, I realized the timeline was A PERIOD I ALREADY LIVED THROUGH - the three years starting from June 1995!

To top it off, at that time I had recently made my first stock investments. They were via a company 401k plan.  I followed that wise move by quitting my job and taking a 3 year sabbatical in the middle of a huge boom (foolish!). I clearly remember at the time, in January of 1996, hearing about record highs in the stock market. "I would not buy any stock now," I thought. "Surely these shortsighted fools will lose their money." I don't remember thinking about the 401k at all, I guess because it felt like something locked away for later. I saw numbers from time to time about a rising market, but never grasped that it had actually doubled.  In the meantime, I paid half my expenses from cash in the bank (yes, really) and half from property rent.

Obviously I am not a fast learner...if I can do this, anyone can.  :)


CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #22 on: May 29, 2018, 03:16:57 PM »
Also any comments and suggestions you might have would be appreciated.

I would like it if the speed were adjustable or just slower. I like the idea, but I feel like I'm not actually buying and selling at the times I would like to because it just speeds past where I would have hit the button.


Updated the game to include adjustable speed.  People can play it at their own pace now. You may need to reload the page if it doesn't show up.

CCCA

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #23 on: June 05, 2018, 05:57:26 PM »
Yes, a Monte Carlo simulation would be nice to have.


Hi, I added the ability to do a Monte Carlo simulation as well.  The probability of picking a given daily return is the frequency/probability at which it occurred over the last 68 years.

talltexan

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Re: A Game that Lets You Try Timing The Stock Market
« Reply #24 on: June 07, 2018, 07:13:16 AM »
I did nothing for 750 days and lost 17% of my money.  :P


Clearly need to pull my money out earlier and invest in buttcoin.

Is that an auto-correct, or is there a new crypto-currency that's even less regulated that I've been missing?

GuitarStv

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I invented butt-coin a few years ago.  It's poised to take off soon, so the time to get in is now.  Is uses crypto so secret that I won't tell you how it works.  Mail me 17.99 per butt coin and your email address, I'll email you the number of buttcoins you've invested in.

talltexan

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Will you accept Bitcoin in exchange for Buttcoin? I took out a margin loan to buy some of the former.

GuitarStv

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Sure.  I accept Bitcoin the way that most places do.  First you transfer your Bitcoin into dollars, then you send me the dollar amount I want.  :P

talltexan

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Good thing that was what my margin loan was in!