Pandemic · S&P 500 Index (2020)
Replay the S&P 500's pandemic-era shock across 144 daily bars ending with a 33.9% max drawdown. You step through each session, face 25 decision points, and receive an AI coach review, simulated purely for education.
144 daily bars · 25 decision points · 2019-10 to 2020-05 · Stocks
Key facts
This window spans 209 days with a peak-to-trough drawdown of 33.9% and a 31.4% run-up.
- Max drawdown
- −33.9%
- Max run-up
- +31.4%
- Duration
- 209 days
- Largest single-day move
- −12.0%
- Bars
- 144 Daily bars
- Decision points
- 25
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 S&P 500 entered October 2019 near historic highs, unaware of the seismic shift that would define the early 2020s. This replay spans 144 daily bars from October 9, 2019 to May 5, 2020, capturing a period when a global health emergency transformed from a distant headline into a full-blown market crisis. Participants face the task of navigating extraordinary uncertainty through 25 decision points, 9 of which are marked as critical junctures where positioning and risk management would be severely tested.
What unfolded was a journey from 2919.4 to 2868.44, a net decline of just -1.7%, yet this deceptively mild headline number obscures a far wilder reality. The index suffered a maximum drawdown of 33.9% from peak to trough, with individual sessions seeing moves as large as 12.0%. Volatility was not a background condition but the dominant feature of every trading day, punishing complacency and rewarding those who had prepared for regime change rather than continuity.
This scenario strips away the clarity of hindsight to force authentic decision-making under pressure. Across 144 bars, traders must confront the gap between their assumptions and evolving reality, calibrate position sizes against unprecedented uncertainty, and manage the psychological temptation to extrapolate either panic or false stability. The nine critical decision points serve as crucibles where process discipline is separated from improvisation, offering lessons that apply far beyond this specific episode into any crisis-driven market environment.