Cocoa Historical Replay: 2009-11 to 2010-05
Cocoa prices swung from 3086 to 2900 across a volatile six-month stretch, including a 20.3% drawdown. Replay each of the 122 daily bars, make your calls at 21 decision points, and receive AI coach feedback in this simulated training scenario.
122 daily bars · 21 decision points · 2009-11 to 2010-05 · Commodities
Key facts
This window spans 177 days with a peak-to-trough drawdown of 20.3% and a 15.9% run-up.
- Max drawdown
- −20.3%
- Max run-up
- +15.9%
- Duration
- 177 days
- Largest single-day move
- −6.0%
- Bars
- 122 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
The scene opens with cocoa futures at 3086, at the tail end of 2009, as commodity markets braced for shifting supply-demand dynamics across West Africa and global chocolate demand. Over the following six months, through May 2010, traders faced a complex landscape where price signals were noisy and directional conviction was difficult to sustain. With 122 daily bars to navigate and 21 structured decision points—7 of them marked as critical—this replay captures the lived experience of participants caught in a market that refused to trend cleanly.
What unfolded was a grinding decline rather than a dramatic crash. Cocoa settled at 2900 by mid-May 2010, representing a -6.0% loss on the close-to-close basis. The real story, however, was written in the volatility: a maximum drawdown of 20.3% tested risk management discipline, while intraday swings reaching 6.0% in a single bar demanded constant position sizing awareness. Those who survived the full run did so not by predicting the direction, but by respecting the range.
This replay is built for decision training. The lesson is not that cocoa was destined to fall, but that a -6.0% outcome can mask a 20.3% interim drawdown that would have wiped out most unprotected accounts. The 21 decision points force participants to commit before seeing the full picture, while the 7 critical nodes isolate moments where conviction and capital management mattered most. Trainees learn that surviving the noise—rather than predicting it—is what separates disciplined participants from those who flame out before the cycle completes.
Featured in the archive