Show HN: Read the Tape – Wordle for daytrading, five blind S&P 500 charts a day

Show HN: Read the Tape – Wordle for daytrading, five blind S&P 500 charts a day(readthetape.cc)

25 points by will_asouka 1 day ago | 19 comments

Read the Tape gives players the same 5 S&P500 stock charts per day to predict. You select low, medium or high confidence and then call the chart UP or DOWN. It's a 1d chart which then resolves over 5 days. Alpha is scored against the Monkey Index, a basket of 11 random coin flips at low confidence which provides a tangible win/lose condition.

We're two weeks in and some interesting data is being kicked up. Players like to call tops even though stonks go up- 60% of the 70 charts so far resolve higher, players' down calls have only been right 31% of the time. There's a full stats dive at https://readthetape.cc/notes/tape-report-1

Your feedback and thoughts is most welcome.

impendia 1 hour ago |

This is fascinating.

That said, if it's possible to do better than random guessing, then does this reflect the fact that the five charts are presumably hand-selected to be "interesting"?

My naive guess, and I'd be very curious to learn if this were wrong, is that something very close to the efficient market hypothesis is true; that, if it were possible to beat the monkeys on randomly chosen stocks on random dates, then someone would have figured this out already and deployed bots to capture whatever profits are available.

mdemare 43 minutes ago | |

The interesting answer by the author, will_asouka, has been marked 'dead' for some inscrutable reason.

WoodenChair 1 hour ago |

> Read the Tape gives players the same 5 S&P500 stock charts per day to predict. You select low, medium or high confidence and then call the chart UP or DOWN. It's a 1d chart which then resolves over 5 days. Alpha is scored against the Monkey Index, a basket of 11 random coin flips at low confidence which provides a tangible win/lose condition.

Your description here and on the website is not clear to me about what I am predicting. Am I predicting whether the stock is going to continue to go up the same day? Is the chart of one day and I am predicting whether it will go up or down the next day? In my opinion, you need to get the explanation of what I'm looking at and the directions of what I am predicting down to one clear sentence.

will_asouka 1 hour ago | |

Yes I think you're right, it's unclear. I'm hopeful the first reveal explains the dynamic as the player goes. Maybe something like- each chart shows 60 daily candles of a real S&P 500 stock, a past window with the ticker and dates hidden, you call if the stock closes higher or lower 5 days later?

xnx 1 hour ago |

Technical analysis is astrology for boys.

stouset 20 minutes ago | |

Thinking there are straightforward, simple algorithmic strategies to beat the market requires one to also believe that the billions of dollars behind large investments for some reason doesn’t care about using these same strategies to make money.

“They have different goals”, I hear. Literally nobody’s investment strategy involves passing up above-average returns for low risk.

buredoranna 34 minutes ago | |

I call it money-astrology.

gizajob 1 hour ago |

It’s a fun game and it throws funny shade for getting the answers wrong, but who would have guessed and sized these answers right based on this sparse data without any additional context? There’s barely enough data in the charts to do TA properly.

will_asouka 57 minutes ago | |

If I was going to add 3 more indicators, what should they be? And/or more history?

gizajob 39 minutes ago | | |

Well the map is not the territory. Just because there’s been a big gap down on a chart that wasn’t the chart doing that, the chart displays that as some kind of causal event like an earnings release or something the company has done to make the market react. So I don’t know what kind of Quant can look at that sparse TA data knowing nothing else about the company and make those calls accurately or know how to size the positions. One random money in a crowd will randomly do better than trying to sensibly do TA with this data.

Maybe Volume would be useful though.

lejeanvaljean 1 hour ago |

To me the description was very clear, the game is fun to play. Would love to see the "prediction" of a LLM in the stats after playing

will_asouka 1 hour ago | |

Nice idea, maybe when there's enough traction for weighted scoreboards I could enter some models

WarmWash 1 hour ago |

Oh boy, I know more than a few guys who will get a kick out of this, hah

will_asouka 1 hour ago | |

Appreciate you spreading the word, thanks

sand500 1 hour ago |

Needs a way to copy and paste text to share with friends. I feel like this is what made wordle viral

will_asouka 1 hour ago | |

The config is currently if you're on desktop, you get text copied to the clipboard. On mobile, you get text + an image to share. Sharing points are 'Challenge a friend' and 'Share result' on the Performance Review, or you can share your career card from the Career Record. I added the image to the mobile shares as early users were screenshotting for x eg https://x.com/investingidiocy/status/2075471303809659212

dionian 38 minutes ago |

would love to see Volume on the chart

will_asouka 29 minutes ago | |

On there as a toggle off by default, under the chart. You're the second to not notice it so design feedback duly noted