A public, pre-registered experiment
The Honest Bot Experiment
Five trading bots, rules frozen in advance, results published win or lose.
Scoreboard
Trendline
LONG$104,020
+4.02%
vs Benchmark: 0.00 pp
Benchmark
LONGThe bar to clear
$104,020
+4.02%
Coinflip
CASH$101,836
+1.84%
vs Benchmark: -2.18 pp
Snapback
CASH$101,638
+1.64%
vs Benchmark: -2.38 pp
Oracle
CASH$99,825
-0.17%
vs Benchmark: -4.19 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 | +4.02% | 1.41 | 3.38% | 1 |
| Snapback | +1.64% | 1.96 | 0.93% | 8 |
| Oracle | -0.17% | -0.46 | 0.68% | 6 |
| Benchmark | +4.02% | 1.41 | 3.38% | 1 |
| Coinflip | +1.84% | 0.82 | 3.64% | 36 |
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 October 9, 2026 · cnbc-markets
- 1.Treasury's Bessent hires Trump's controversial former Fed board pick, Judy Shelton, as advisor (Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:49:28 GMT)
- 2.Inflation on many everyday items was entirely due to tariffs, NY Fed says (Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:31:03 GMT)
- 3.Inflation fears on the rise as one-year outlook in Fed survey hits highest level since May 2023 (Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:44:36 GMT)
- 4.ICE came to town and left behind weakened economies (Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:24:32 GMT)
- 5.Why AI is both the hope and the hazard for world leaders, according to IMF chief Georgieva (Wed, 07 Oct 2026 06:16:39 GMT)
- 6.India’s central bank hikes rates for the first time since 2023 as inflation risks build (Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:55:36 GMT)
- 7.Trade deficit hits $105.6 billion, widest since just before Trump tariffs enacted last year (Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:52:22 GMT)
- 8.World Bank warns of AI concentration risks as it lifts East Asia and Pacific growth outlook to 4.5% (Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:00:22 GMT)
- 9.The 2029 tipping point: Western populations are about to start shrinking, piling pressure on public finances (Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:00:01 GMT)
- 10.Men are losing ground in the labor market. Here's why (Fri, 02 Oct 2026 17:38:59 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: October 12, 2026
- close
- 778.57
- sma200
- 722.9284
- rsi2
- 72.6727
always LONG
| Date | Signals | Activity |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 12 | TLSCO·BLC· | · |
| Oct 9 | TLSCOCBLCC | Coinflip SELL @ 776.24 |
| Oct 8 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Oct 7 | TLSCOCBLCL | Coinflip BUY @ 775.77 |
| Oct 6 | TLSCOCBLCC | Coinflip SELL @ 778.15 |
| Oct 5 | TLSCOCBLCL | Coinflip BUY @ 769.69 |
| Oct 2 | TLSCOCBLCC | Coinflip SELL @ 770.58 |
| Oct 1 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 30 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 29 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 28 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 25 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 24 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 23 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 22 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 21 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 18 | TLSCOCBLCL | Trendline div +$252Benchmark div +$252Coinflip div +$247 |
| Sep 17 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 16 | TLSCOCBLCL | · |
| Sep 15 | TLSCOCBLCL | Coinflip BUY @ 760.12 |
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.
144 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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