Claude-Built Trading Game: 'Couch' Beats Humans 62% of the Time
noir_chat · reddit · 2026-08-30
The author used Claude to build a web game called "Beat the Couch", challenging players to outperform a simple buy-and-hold strategy (the "couch") by timing the market.
- Mechanics: Based on real S&P 500 historical data (1928-2025, incl. dividends/T-bills), players have one buy/sell button. After each game, 1,000 monkeys replay the player's trade count on random days; beating fewer than 90% labels the win as "Lucky".
- Results: With over 100,000 games played, the couch won 62% of the time. Humans only seem to gain an edge when a market crash occurs within their window.
- Tech Stack: Claude handled the data pipeline (S&P closes, dividends), the entire single-file HTML game, and the Cloudflare backend.
More from Fun
- Piano starts playing while home alone; dev's first thought was Codex resumed his player-piano project — sch · 2026-10-16
- Mistral's on-device infra rack revealed: DGX Spark, Mac Studio and more — gregmushen · 2026-10-16
- Armin Ronacher's kid vibe-coded multiplayer with AI, teaching dad about PeerJS — mitsuhiko · 2026-10-16
- Viral meme nails AI's irony: it can write symphonies but can't do the dishes — briannekimmel · 2026-10-16
- Man with cerebral palsy uses HeyGen avatar to tell his life story in his own voice — HeyGen · 2026-10-16
- Researcher jokes that AI has officially achieved dad jokes internally — keyanzhang · 2026-10-16