The Daily Call
Five hidden months of real market history. You see what an investor saw that month — the gauges and the two years behind them — and nothing else. Call the next twelve months: all in, half, or out.
How the Day Works
The same five months for every player, from midnight UTC to midnight UTC.
- You start on $10,000. Every call moves all of it.
- In pays the market. Out pays the 3-month Treasury bill of that month. Half pays the mean.
- A green square means you made the best of the three calls, red the worst.
- Three of five keeps your streak. Two or fewer, and the streak goes back to zero.
- The five months are never in the same two years, and they never all rise or all fall.
Why This Is Hard
Because it was hard at the time, with the same numbers on the desk.
The gauges warn, they do not time
A stretched Buffett Indicator or an inverted yield curve says the ground is soft. Neither says the month. The market stayed expensive for four years after 1996, and everybody who sold on the first red light watched it climb without them.
Cash was not always free
Sitting out cost nothing in 1981, when bills paid 15%, and cost you everything in 2013, when they paid nothing at all. Every round shows the bill rate of that month, because the choice is never stocks against zero.
The chart is the real one
Every month is a real S&P 500 month-end close since 1971, and every gauge reading is the one our dashboard publishes for that year. The move is price only, so the market side is a shade understated: dividends are not in it.
Nobody gets an easy day
At least two of the five months rose and at least two fell. "Always in" cannot win a day by itself, and neither can "always out". You have to read them one by one.
The Gauges, Reading Today
The same gauges, reading today instead of 1974
The long game: twenty years, six instruments, one run
CAPE — the valuation gauge of every round
10Y-2Y spread — inverted before every recent recession
Market cap to GDP, the gauge Buffett named
Which past month today most resembles