Heating Oil Historical Replay: 2008-08 to 2008-11
Replay 68 daily bars of heating oil from August 19 to November 21, 2008, a span that saw prices plunge 45.5% from 3.12 to 1.7. Walk through each session, tackle 12 decision points with 4 marked critical, and receive an AI coach review of your simulated choices.
68 daily bars · 12 decision points · 2008-08 to 2008-11 · Commodities
Key facts
This window spans 94 days with a peak-to-trough drawdown of 49.1% and a 13.1% run-up.
- Max drawdown
- −49.1%
- Max run-up
- +13.1%
- Duration
- 94 days
- Largest single-day move
- +9.1%
- Bars
- 68 Daily bars
- Decision points
- 12
Every figure above is computed programmatically from this replay’s own candle series — no editorial input, no LLM. Methodology: Methodology
The market advances day by day. You only see candles up to the current day — as if you were really there.
At key decision points choose Buy / Trim / Exit / Hold. Each decision advances the timeline by one day.
After settlement you get a six-dimension score and an AI coach review. Your result enters the scenario leaderboard.
Event Replay
What happened — and what it teaches
The replay drops you into the heating oil market during the late summer and fall of 2008, a period when the global financial system was unraveling. Heating oil, a key energy commodity tied to winter demand and economic activity, faced extraordinary pressure as credit markets seized up and growth expectations collapsed. You have 68 daily bars from August 19 to November 21, 2008, to navigate what would become one of the most violent commodity selloffs in modern history. The stakes are clear: this was not a slow erosion but a cascading breakdown of confidence in raw materials.
What unfolded over those months was stark. Prices plummeted 45.5% from 3.12 to 1.7, with a maximum drawdown reaching 49.1%—meaning any long position would have been nearly half wiped out at the worst point. The market's most volatile single session saw a 9.1% move, underscoring the kind of intraday turbulence that makes stop-losses unreliable and position sizing critical. This was not an orderly correction but a crash environment where liquidity evaporated and traditional correlations broke down.
For decision training, this scenario exposes the psychological trap of fighting a powerful trend. Early in the decline, bullish arguments about winter demand and supply constraints would have been compelling; acting on them would have been costly. The lesson centers on process discipline: sizing positions to survive a 49.1% drawdown, respecting momentum that moves 9.1% in a single session, and recognizing when fundamental arguments become irrelevant in a forced liquidation environment. Twelve decision points punctuate the replay, with four marked as critical moments where choices between holding, reducing, or capitulating define outcomes.