S&P 400 MidCap Downtrend Replay (2002-04-16 to 2002-07-23)
Step into the 2002 S&P 400 MidCap downturn, a 138-day stretch where the index fell 11.5% and suffered a 28.2% drawdown. Replay the volatile daily tape, face 11 decision points, and receive an AI coach review through simulated, educational training.
138 daily bars · 11 decision points · 2002-02 to 2002-09 · Stocks
Key facts
This window spans 197 days with a peak-to-trough drawdown of 28.2% and a 17.6% run-up.
- Max drawdown
- −28.2%
- Max run-up
- +17.6%
- Duration
- 197 days
- Largest single-day move
- +5.4%
- Bars
- 138 Daily bars
- Decision points
- 11
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
In the spring of 2002, the S&P 400 MidCap index faced a harsh reckoning. The replay spans 138 daily bars from late February through early September, a period when the broader market was still digesting the wreckage of the dot-com collapse. Mid-cap stocks, caught between large-cap blue chips and volatile small caps, navigated a landscape of thinning confidence and shifting sector leadership. The scenario captures a specific 2002 downturn—April 16 through July 23—where participants must contend with a market that refuses to find stable footing.
Over that replay window, the index fell from 503.14 to 445.4, a decline of -11.5%. Yet the headline figure understates the turbulence: the maximum drawdown reached 28.2%, meaning interim losses far exceeded the final settlement. The largest single-bar move of 5.4% illustrates how abrupt sentiment shifts could wipe out positions in a single session. With 11 decision points embedded in the tape—4 deemed critical—traders are forced to act repeatedly under uncertainty rather than set a single static hedge.
This replay is a laboratory for process and psychology. Participants learn that surviving a -11.5% decline requires more than directional conviction; it demands sizing discipline, an acceptance of drawdown as a feature rather than a failure signal, and the composure to act at decision points without succumbing to panic or recency bias. The 5.4% intraday spikes teach humility about prediction, while the 28.2% drawdown reinforces that paper losses and realized losses diverge sharply under stress. No trade is graded on outcome alone—only on the quality of the decision given the information available at each tick.