A public, pre-registered experiment
The Honest Bot Experiment
Five trading bots, rules frozen in advance, results published win or lose.
Scoreboard
Coinflip
CASH$101,176
+1.18%
vs Benchmark: +0.56 pp
Trendline
LONG$100,620
+0.62%
vs Benchmark: 0.00 pp
Benchmark
LONGThe bar to clear
$100,620
+0.62%
Snapback
CASH$100,000
0.00%
vs Benchmark: -0.62 pp
Oracle
CASH$100,000
0.00%
vs Benchmark: -0.62 pp
Equity curves
All five sleeves start from $100,000 in simulated cash. Fills are at official opening prices with a 0.01% cost per trade.
The numbers
| Bot | Total return | Sharpe (ann.) | Max drawdown | Trades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trendline | +0.62% | — | 0.65% | 1 |
| Snapback | 0.00% | — | 0.00% | 0 |
| Oracle | 0.00% | — | 0.00% | 0 |
| Benchmark | +0.62% | — | 0.65% | 1 |
| Coinflip | +1.18% | — | 0.00% | 2 |
Backtest, for the record (Jan 2000 to Jun 2026, QuantConnect)
Trendline: 413.67% · Sharpe 0.263 · maxDD 24.2% · 173 orders
Snapback: 287.87% · Sharpe 0.183 · maxDD 34.5% · 605 orders
The forward test exists to measure the gap from these numbers. Oracle has no backtest, by design.
Oracle's corner
What Oracle read on July 10, 2026 · cnbc-markets
- 1.China consumer price growth weakens in June while producer inflation rises to near 4-year high (Thu, 09 Jul 2026 02:31:37 GMT)
- 2.Christine Lagarde leaves door open to early ECB exit, as she mulls French politics (Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:34:32 GMT)
- 3.Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation rate falls to lowest in 50 years, outside of Covid era (Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:23:29 GMT)
- 4.U.S. job creation cools in June with payrolls growth of just 57,000; unemployment rate at 4.2% (Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:50:27 GMT)
- 5.Europe wants to rebalance trade with Beijing, but can't quit Chinese air conditioners (Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:52:09 GMT)
- 6.World Cup could boost the June jobs report by 40,000, Goldman estimates (Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:18:05 GMT)
- 7.Private payrolls rose by 98,000 in June, less than expected, ADP reports (Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:41:09 GMT)
- 8.North Sea oil and renewables: The UK’s next PM faces a defining energy policy decision (Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:28:00 GMT)
- 9.Do you really, really love your job? Then you're not alone, according to surprising results from this survey (Tue, 30 Jun 2026 11:08:24 GMT)
- 10.China widens Japan export curbs, targeting drone makers, nuclear firms and defense institutes (Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:46:25 GMT)
Its answer, verbatim
"CASH"
The frozen prompt
You are deciding a one-day position in SPY (the S&P 500 ETF) based solely on this morning's headlines. Below are the ten most recent headlines from a major financial news feed, fetched at 9:00 AM Eastern on {DATE}.
{HEADLINES}
Based only on these headlines, decide whether to be LONG SPY for today's session or to hold CASH. Reply with exactly one word: LONG or CASH.
Daily log
Most recent: July 13, 2026
- close
- 754.95
- sma200
- 694.4818
- rsi2
- 86.4141
always LONG
| Date | Signals | Activity |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 13 | TLSCO·BLC· | · |
| Jul 10 | TLSCOCBLCC | Coinflip SELL @ 752.05 |
| Jul 9 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Jul 8 | TLSCOCBLCL | Coinflip BUY @ 743.16 |
| Jul 7 | TLSCOCBLCC | Benchmark BUY @ 750.22Trendline BUY @ 750.22 |
| Jul 6 | T·S·OCB·CC | · |
Each chip: bot letter, then stance (L long, C cash). Bots: T Trendline · S Snapback · O Oracle · B Benchmark · C Coinflip
Changelog
July 6, 2026
Pre-launch reset. Cleared all provisional data generated during build and testing: trades, daily equity, signals, headlines, and run logs. Kept the SPY price history and the five strategy definitions. All public counters begin at zero for the launch window opening 2026-07-06.
10 pipeline runs, 0 errors. All public, including the errors.
Every table behind this page is publicly readable: prices, signals, trades, the daily ledger, the run log, and this changelog.
A bot wins only by beating Benchmark on both return and Sharpe over the full window. Six months can't distinguish skill from luck; that's what Coinflip is for.
Nothing here is investment advice. All money is simulated.
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