Could Your Class Have Survived the 1929 Crash?

The four rounds

Each link deals the same two secret years to everyone who opens it, so the whole class plays the same market. Students should not know which crash they are in until the game tells them. Do not read the key below out loud.

The plan, minute by minute

0-5 min	Hook. Ask: if you had been investing in September 1929, would you have sold before the crash? Most hands go up. Write the number on the board.
5-10 min	Rules. $10,000, two secret years of real daily S&P 500 prices, dividends included. BUY means ride the market, SELL means hide in cash (which earns Treasury-bill interest). The couch buys once and never sells. Whoever ends with more money wins.
10-30 min	Play rounds A to D. Each student records each round on the worksheet: trades, final balance, the couch's balance, the stamp. Fast finishers can play a round twice; the game marks replays.
30-40 min	Debrief. Tally the class: how many beat the couch in each round? Then reveal the windows and compare with the thousands of players in the archive (key below). Ask what the winners and losers did differently.
40-45 min	Exit ticket: one of the discussion questions, two sentences, on the back of the worksheet.

What the stamps mean

THE COUCH WINS: the student finished behind buy-and-hold. LUCKY: more than 2% ahead of the couch, but 1,000 monkeys making the same number of trades on random days did about as well. TIMED THE MARKET: ahead of the couch and better than 90% of the monkeys (the ledger calls it a skilled win). ENLIGHTENED: the student never touched the button and tied the couch exactly. DEAD HEAT: within 2% either way. The monkey audit is a permutation test, which is a nice way into a statistics conversation: how would you tell skill from luck in any game? The monkey audit page runs it live on the 1987 crash.

Discussion questions

1. Most players beat the couch in the 1929 round and lose in calm markets. Why does being out of the market help in some years and hurt in others?
2. Many winners were stamped LUCKY, not TIMED THE MARKET. What is the difference, and why does the game check with monkeys?
3. Real traders also pay commissions and taxes. The game ignores both. Would adding them help the couch or the traders?
4. The couch never reads the news. Was that an advantage in your round? When would it not be?
5. Professional fund managers mostly fail to beat the index over 15 years. Does this game make that easier or harder to believe?
6. If you had to manage your own retirement savings for 40 years, what rule would you set for yourself after playing?

Teacher key (do not project)

Round	The window	The couch	Players who beat it
A	The Great Crash Sep 3, 1929 to Sep 3, 1931	-53.5%	72.9%
B	Black Monday Jan 2, 1987 to Dec 28, 1988	+23.0%	40.2%
C	The Top Mar 24, 2000 to Apr 1, 2002	-22.8%	72.2%
D	The Crisis Oct 9, 2007 to Oct 7, 2009	-28.3%	53.9%

Player figures come from every game on the ledger whose window started in that year. Each linked page tells the story of its window and makes a good reading for homework.

Notes for teachers

The data. Real daily S&P 500 closes from 1928 to 2025, dividends included, calibrated year by year to the annual total returns published by NYU Stern (Damodaran). Cash earns that year's 3-month Treasury bill rate. No fees, no taxes, no spreads: every result is the trader's best case. Every rule is in the fine print.

What it is not. Not financial advice, and not a stock picking game: it is the whole US large-company market, one button, two years. It says nothing about individual stocks, international markets or any specific product.

Privacy. No accounts, no names, no email. The game files an anonymous result (window, trades, outcome) to a public ledger of every game ever played. Students never type anything.

Going further. The archive scores thirty famous windows. The ledger shows what 100,000 games say about time in the market. The evidence page summarises the research (SPIVA, Barber and Odean, the Buffett bet). Across the whole ledger the couch wins 62% of 120,800 games.

Print the worksheet (prints on its own page, without the rest of this page).

Frequently asked

Is there a free stock market timing game for the classroom?

Yes. Beat the Couch gives each student $10,000 and two secret years of real S&P 500 history against a couch that never sells. No signup; this page has four ready rounds and a printable worksheet.

Could you have survived the 1929 crash?

In the game, players who traded the September 1929 window beat buy-and-hold 72.9% of the time. In most other years they do much worse.

How long does the market timing lesson take?

About 45 minutes: five to hook, five for the rules, twenty to play four rounds, ten to debrief and five for an exit ticket.