A public, pre-registered experiment

The Honest Bot Experiment

Five trading bots, rules frozen in advance, results published win or lose.

LIVE: day 13 of 131Read the pre-registration

Scoreboard

Snapback

LONG

$100,257

+0.26%

vs Benchmark: +0.53 pp

Oracle

CASH

$100,226

+0.23%

vs Benchmark: +0.49 pp

Coinflip

CASH

$99,812

-0.19%

vs Benchmark: +0.08 pp

Trendline

LONG

$99,731

-0.27%

vs Benchmark: 0.00 pp

Benchmark

LONG

The bar to clear

$99,731

-0.27%

Equity curves

$98.8k$99.7k$100.6k$101.5kJul 6Jul 8Jul 10Jul 15Jul 17Jul 21
TrendlineSnapbackOracleBenchmark(the bar)Coinflip

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

BotTotal returnSharpe (ann.)Max drawdownTrades
Trendline-0.27%-0.571.70%1
Snapback+0.26%4.790.00%1
Oracle+0.23%2.100.28%2
Benchmark-0.27%-0.571.70%1
Coinflip-0.19%-0.422.10%8

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 22, 2026 · cnbc-markets

  1. 1.Trump plans generic drug tariffs from 2028 with two-year delay testing U.S. onshoring push (Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:28:08 GMT)
  2. 2.Import prices post surprise gain as costs of goods from China hit highest since 2008 (Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:13:49 GMT)
  3. 3.World Cup gave bars and restaurants a needed boost as consumers flash warning signs, Fed says (Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:53:10 GMT)
  4. 4.Wholesale prices unexpectedly declined 0.3% in June on big drop in gasoline (Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:22:48 GMT)
  5. 5.Renewed Hormuz hostilities drive ECB rates rethink amid ‘extremely volatile’ outlook (Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:33:19 GMT)
  6. 6.China posts slowest quarterly growth since 2022 as investment slumps, fanning stimulus calls (Wed, 15 Jul 2026 05:14:11 GMT)
  7. 7.Consumer prices rose 3.5% annually in June, less than expected as energy prices eased (Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:05:13 GMT)
  8. 8.India's inflation accelerates to 4.38% in June, exceeding forecasts (Mon, 13 Jul 2026 10:56:52 GMT)
  9. 9.'Funflation' hits home: Why staying in isn't the cost-saver it used to be (Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:20:06 GMT)
  10. 10.China consumer price growth weakens in June while producer inflation rises to near 4-year high (Thu, 09 Jul 2026 02:31:37 GMT)

Its answer, verbatim

"CASH"

Resulting signal: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 22, 2026

TrendlineLONG
close
748.28
sma200
697.4703
SnapbackCASH
rsi2
67.9824
OracleCASH
source
cnbc-markets
headline_count
10
BenchmarkLONG

always LONG

CoinflipLONG
draw
804601558
DateSignalsActivity
Jul 22TLSCOCBLCL·
Jul 21TLSLOCBLCCSnapback BUY @ 746.29Coinflip SELL @ 746.29
Jul 20TLSCOCBLCLCoinflip BUY @ 747.06
Jul 17TLSCOCBLCCCoinflip SELL @ 742.08
Jul 16TLSCOCBLCLOracle SELL @ 752.76Coinflip BUY @ 752.76
Jul 15TLSCOLBLCCCoinflip SELL @ 754.24
Jul 14TLSCOLBLCLOracle BUY @ 750.91
Jul 13TLSCOCBLCLCoinflip BUY @ 752.47
Jul 10TLSCOCBLCCCoinflip SELL @ 752.05
Jul 9TLSCOCBLCL·
Jul 8TLSCOCBLCLCoinflip BUY @ 743.16
Jul 7TLSCOCBLCCTrendline BUY @ 750.22Benchmark BUY @ 750.22
Jul 6T·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.

26 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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