Cotton Historical Replay: 2001-11 to 2002-05
Replay 120 daily bars of cotton from 2001-11-09 to 2002-05-09, navigating a 20.9% max drawdown within simulated capital only. Step through each session, tackle 7 critical decision points, and receive AI coach feedback on your historical reasoning.
120 daily bars · 21 decision points · 2001-11 to 2002-05 · Commodities
Key facts
This window spans 181 days with a peak-to-trough drawdown of 20.9% and a 21.4% run-up.
- Max drawdown
- −20.9%
- Max run-up
- +21.4%
- Duration
- 181 days
- Largest single-day move
- +10.0%
- Bars
- 120 Daily bars
- Decision points
- 21
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
Cotton futures entered November 2001 as part of the soft commodities complex, navigating a US economy grappling with post-dot-com weakness and an aggressive Federal Reserve easing cycle. The title references dollar weakness and twin deficits, creating an inflationary backdrop that traditionally supports hard assets. For traders, the period presented a classic conflict between macroeconomic pressures and commodity-specific fundamentals, with cotton prices reflecting both currency dynamics and seasonal supply-demand forces. The market backdrop set the stage for volatility that would test even experienced participants.
From the opening close of 32.78 on 2001-11-09 to 33.95 by 2002-05-09, cotton delivered a modest 3.6% net gain across 120 daily bars. Yet this headline figure conceals a turbulent journey: the period featured a 20.9% maximum drawdown and a largest single-bar move of 10.0%. Seven critical decision points punctuated the session, demanding that participants either adapt their positioning or endure compounding losses. The gap between headline return and actual trading difficulty defines the central challenge of this replay.
The scenario trains traders to confront three core competencies: process discipline under uncertainty, rigorous risk calibration against extreme drawdowns, and psychological resilience when outcomes diverge from expectations. With 21 decision points and 7 critical junctions, participants learn that survival in volatile markets requires distinguishing between information quality and narrative appeal. The educational value lies not in predicting direction but in building repeatable frameworks that perform across regimes where inflation signals and dollar dynamics create conflicting pressures.
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