US National (FHFA, 1975Q1+) Historical Replay: 1997-07 to 2004-10
From 1997 to 2004, US national home prices climbed 61.3% in this monthly replay of a historic housing boom. Step through each month, face 6 decision points, and receive an AI coach review as you learn how policy and sentiment shaped the bubble (simulated, educational).
30 monthly bars · 6 decision points · 1997-07 to 2004-10 · Property
Key facts
- Max run-up
- +61.3%
- Largest single-month move
- +3.8%
- Bars
- 30 Monthly bars
- Decision points
- 6
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
From July 1997 to October 2004, the US national housing market — measured here by the FHFA index dating back to 1975 Q1 — entered one of the most studied run-ups in modern real-estate history. Policy was loosening, household formation was strong, and a confident national mood treated home purchases as both shelter and store of value. With thirty monthly bars and six decision points, two of them flagged as critical, this replay compresses more than seven years of price discovery into a sequence of choices a buyer, lender, or investor might have faced in real time. The stakes were cultural as much as financial: a generation was being taught that housing barely falls, and that leverage on a roof is the safest kind of wealth-building.
What the tape actually shows, however, is a remarkably orderly climb rather than a vertical spike. The index rose from 202.02 to 325.86, a cumulative gain of 61.3% over the full span, with a maximum drawdown of 0.0% — meaning the path was almost uninterrupted. The largest single-bar move was 3.8%, a notable but not extreme monthly jump that hints at how gradually the boom fed on itself. Because the journey was smooth in hindsight, the danger inside the period was not volatility but its absence: very few months delivered a clear warning, which is exactly the condition that lulls participants into treating momentum as a law of nature.
For decision training, the lesson is process, not prediction. The two critical decision points are the moments to slow down: they are where the temptation to extrapolate the trend is strongest, and where checking underwriting standards, affordability, and concentration risk matters most. The replay also trains the eye to notice that a 3.8% monthly move, harmless in isolation, compounds into something extraordinary over years. Practicing restraint when the drawdown register reads 0.0% is harder than it sounds, and that asymmetry — calm markets breeding bold decisions — is the psychology this scenario is designed to surface.