Turn-based investment simulation game with real market data.
An investor-behavior training instrument. Trade a masked slice of the past — one trading day at a time, solo or against 500 others. Find out what it was. Learn what you actually did.
How it trains you
A value chain, not a game loop. Each tape is one controlled experiment in decision quality.
Unlabeled historical market data — real assets, real regimes, ticker and dates masked.
Constrained execution: ~6 order fills, fixed sizing, friction drag, Crux-Day stress tests.
Risk-adjusted score vs. a passive benchmark, benchmark alpha, drawdown profile, captured rationale.
Measured calibration: overtrading curbed, overconfidence checked, process documented.
The core loop
Nine steps, about seven minutes, then it starts again — against a new tape, a friend's ghost, or today's Daily Tape.
Enter by code or link
Room code, QR scan, or a friend's challenge link.
Play now, sign up later
Guests play instantly. An account is only needed to claim your result.
Read the masked tape
A real price chart. Ticker hidden: ████
Buy, Sell, or Wait
BuySellWait
1 turn = 1 trading day.
Size it: 25 / 50 / 100%
How much of your cash rides. Undo lasts 3 seconds.
Face the Crux Days
Crux Day
The days that mattered most. Size carefully.
Beat the Index Ghost
Your rival: buy once, hold, never trade. Doing nothing, as a competitor.
Reveal: ticker and dates
████ flips to NFLX · Jan–Mar 2022
60-second teardown
What happened. What the tape taught. What it didn't.
How you're scored
The Achilles Score: how much better you did than doing nothing — after costs, adjusted for risk.
Tape skill ≠ investing skill.
The debrief
Every tape ends with a structured post-trade review — the learning loop that makes the experiment worth running.
Unmask
Ticker and dates revealed. The story behind the chart, in plain terms.
Attribute
What drove the result: skill, regime, or luck — with the luck band as the control.
Audit
Your thesis log, scored for calibration. Process documented, not just P&L.
The career ladder
Your rank is a title, not a number. Depth unlocks by playing — never by paying, never by a quiz.
Step down anytime. It's free.
Sneak peek
Design preview — setting up a hosted event. Pick a scenario, set the clock, invite up to 500 players.
Value Capture vs. Value Creation
The lens from Competing in the Age of AI (Iansiti & Lakhani) — and the closing frame of every Read Achilles newsletter.
Markets create value. Traders capture it — or leak it to costs, churn, and mistiming. Every tape measures your capture against the Ghost, who captures for free by doing nothing. Your edge was never predicting creation. It was capturing efficiently.
Ways to play
Daily Tape
One tape a day, same for everyone. Streaks.
Ghost Duels
Race a recorded player on the same tape.
Desks
Clubs with weekly fixtures. Intramural league.
Challenge links
Send a friend your tape. Side-by-side.
Hosted Events
Classrooms. Graded on thinking, never luck.