This is Day 11 of the Investing Smarter Test — a 12-month experiment where I gave an AI $1,000 in a real Robinhood account and let it trade on its own. The only question I’m trying to answer: can an AI beat the simplest thing a person could do with $1,000, which is drop it in an S&P 500 index fund and walk away?
This morning the market was ugly in one corner and calm in another — the whole semiconductor group got hammered while boring, defensive stocks quietly caught a bid — and the AI did the hardest thing in investing: nothing. It reviewed all three of its holdings and left them alone.
Here’s where things stand.
Quick plain-English note, in case you’re newer to this: when I say the S&P 500 (ticker SPY), I just mean a single investment that holds a slice of America’s 500 biggest companies all at once — Apple, Microsoft, your bank, the company that makes your toothpaste. You buy one thing and you instantly own a little piece of all of them. That’s the “boring index fund” everyone keeps telling you to buy — and it’s the yardstick the AI has to beat. Learn that one term and you’re already ahead of most people.
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What This Does NOT Prove
Before I show you the scoreboard, a word about what you’re looking at.
This is one account. One run. One AI. Twelve months. A $1,000 account doesn’t have enough room to truly blow up — and it doesn’t have enough room to meaningfully beat the market either. Statistics require sample sizes. One experiment is a story, not a proof.
If the AI is up right now, that doesn’t prove AI investing works. If it’s down, that doesn’t prove it can’t. What it does prove is whether this specific AI, following this specific strategy, beat or lost to the simplest available alternative — a plain index fund — over this particular stretch of time.
I’m publishing every day, win or lose. If the AI blows up, you’ll see it here. That’s the point.
The Investing Smarter Test Scoreboard — Day 11 (July 7, 2026)
| AI Account | S&P 500 Index (Benchmark) | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting value | $1,000.00 | $1,000.00 |
| Current value | $1,010.31 | $1,002.06 |
| Change from start | +$10.31 (+1.03%) | +$2.06 (+0.21%) |
| AI vs. Index gap | +$8.25 (AI ahead) | — |
| Max drawdown (AI) | about −1% (a shallow, quiet ride so far) | similar |
The S&P 500 benchmark: $1,000 invested in SPY on June 22, 2026, dividends reinvested, no fees. The honest comparison is always “what would $1,000 in an index fund have done?”
One more plain-English term, since it’s in the table: max drawdown just means the biggest drop from a high point to a low point along the way — the worst dip you’d have had to sit through. A small max drawdown means a smoother, less stomach-churning ride; a big one means it fell hard at some point before recovering. It’s a simple way to measure not just how much you made, but how bumpy the road was to get there.
Scoreboard commentary: The AI’s account barely budged today, but the index fund slipped — so the gap between them widened a little in the AI’s favor, from about $2 yesterday to a bit over $8 now. Worth a caution while it’s fun: this is a tiny account over a short stretch, and a lead this small can just as easily be luck as anything else — so I wouldn’t read too much into it yet, in either direction.
If This Were $10,000 Instead of $1,000
I started this with $1,000 because that’s a real, relatable amount and it’s what I was willing to hand an AI. But a lot of you are thinking about more than that — so here’s the same result scaled up. Same holdings, same percentages, just 10× the starting money:
| If you’d started with $10,000 | AI Account | S&P 500 Index |
|---|---|---|
| Starting value | $10,000.00 | $10,000.00 |
| Would be worth today | $10,103.06 | $10,020.58 |
| Change | +$103.06 (+1.03%) | +$20.58 (+0.21%) |
| Difference | +$82.48 | — |
The point of showing both isn’t “look what the AI could have made you.” It’s the gap. At $1,000 the AI is ahead of the boring index fund by $8.25; scaled to $10,000 that same gap is $82.48 — same story, bigger numbers. Whether it’s $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000, the question is identical: did the clever thing beat the boring index fund? — and notice the boring index fund’s number scales just as cleanly without anyone having to watch it every day. (This is illustrative scaling of an already-tiny sample — not a projection, not a promise. Past performance is not future performance.)
Why the AI Held — And Why That’s the Whole Point
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about investing: most of the skill is in not doing things.
Today the market split in two. A whole group of chip stocks fell hard — some down 8, 10, even 12 percent in a single day — while money rotated the other way into safe, steady names like Coca-Cola and big healthcare companies. A human staring at that all day feels the itch to do something — sell before the falling stocks fall further, or chase the ones jumping green. That itch is what empties retirement accounts.
The AI felt none of it. At the open this morning it reviewed the portfolio and decided to hold its two real positions. Here’s the core of the reasoning it logged, in its own words:
“VWO (emerging-markets fund), down about 3.7% — the thesis is still developing, not falsified; it’s holding above the level that would tell me I’m wrong, so I hold. XBI (biotech fund), up about 8% — this was a logged trend thesis, it’s printing a fresh 52-week high today, none of my exit triggers fired, so the thesis is confirmed and playing out; I hold. On new ideas: I looked hard at two names at fresh highs — Eli Lilly and Coca-Cola — and rejected both. Lilly is a rich-valuation momentum chase with an unresolved FDA safety signal and earnings coming; Coca-Cola’s pop is largely today’s risk-off rotation and it has earnings inside my likely holding window. I will not chase either into a one-day defensive rotation.”
A note on reading that: the AI will always write a confident explanation. Confident reasoning is not the same as correct reasoning. I’m logging it exactly as written so we can look back later and see whether it was right — or whether it just sounded right. Judge the process and the math, not the confident tone.
What I like about today isn’t that the AI was brilliant. It’s that it was patient. Two names were dangling in front of it at all-time highs, practically daring it to buy, and it walked away from both because they didn’t clear its own rules. That restraint — not the stock picks — is the single most valuable habit any investor can build.
One bit of housekeeping, in the spirit of full transparency
Way back when I was first wiring this experiment together, I placed a tiny $1 test order in Apple stock — literally to confirm the plumbing worked and the AI could actually place a trade. It was never a real investment pick, and I’ve always flagged it that way. Today the AI, reviewing the account, decided that leftover $1 sliver of Apple doesn’t belong on the books and should be cleared out. As of this writing that cleanup order hasn’t gone through yet, so all three positions — including the $1 Apple crumb — are still technically in the account, and the scoreboard above reflects that. I’m telling you this not because $1 matters to the score (it doesn’t), but because the whole deal with this experiment is that you see everything, including the boring plumbing. When the cleanup completes, I’ll note it.
What You Should Actually Do With $1,000
I get this question every time I write about investing experiments: “Should I do what the AI is doing?”
Here’s my honest answer: probably not.
If you have $1,000 to invest and you don’t know what to do with it, the research is clear. Put it in a low-cost S&P 500 index fund — something like SPY, VOO, or FSKAX. Set it up as automatic monthly contributions if you can. Don’t check it daily.
Where to actually do it. For each service below there are two links — a referral link where you and I both get a small bonus, and a plain direct link where I get nothing. It’s your choice, never required, and I explain exactly how I handle this on my Editorial Independence page.
- Vanguard — the low-cost gold standard. Buy VOO directly; about 0.03%/yr. Best if you want the cheapest DIY option. No referral program, so just one link: vanguard.com.
- Betterment — a robo-advisor that auto-builds and rebalances an index portfolio for you (about 0.25%/yr). → referral link (we both get a bonus) or plain link (I get nothing).
- Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it; best for building the habit. → referral link ($5 for you after you invest) or plain link (I get nothing).
- Robinhood — the commission-free broker this experiment runs on; fine for buying VOO or SPY and leaving it alone. → referral link (free fractional share for both of us) or plain link (I get nothing).
That’s it. That’s the boring, reliable thing. The entire point of this experiment is to find out whether a sophisticated AI can actually beat that boring, reliable thing — and after 11 days, here’s exactly where it stands: the AI is $8.25 ahead of the index fund.
Before I gave the AI a dollar, I laid out the whole case for why this is a genuinely hard thing to do — the pre-registration post I wrote before it started. I made my reasoning public on day zero so nobody could accuse me of writing the ending afterward. Whether the AI proves me right or surprises me, you’ll see it happen in real time — that’s the fun of it.
Transparency: The Full Log Is Public
Every decision this AI has made or declined to make — plus its logged reasoning — is documented and timestamped, and the AI’s instructions are public too. If you want to see the full rules of the experiment and the running story, start with the pre-registration post. If you want to verify anything in this post, you can.
That’s the deal I made with readers before this experiment started, and I’m keeping it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How is the S&P 500 benchmark calculated?
A: I recorded the price of SPY (the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust) on June 22, 2026, the same day the AI account started. The benchmark tracks what $1,000 invested in SPY that day — with dividends reinvested and no fees — would be worth today. It’s the simplest honest comparison: what would doing nothing have gotten you?
Q: Can I follow along or copy the AI’s trades?
A: You can follow along — every trade and hold decision is logged publicly. I’d encourage you NOT to copy the trades, though. This is one $1,000 experiment, not a recommendation — a single concentrated account isn’t a sound way for anyone to invest their own money, no matter how it ends up doing. The better move is the boring one above: a low-cost index fund, left alone. Follow the experiment for the story; don’t follow it as a strategy.
Q: If the AI isn’t trading, is anything actually happening?
A: Yes, but slowly. A buy-and-hold strategy means most days are hold days by design. The AI is monitoring for specific conditions that would justify a trade. In the meantime, whatever the account holds is rising or falling with the market. That’s the nature of this kind of strategy — and one of the ways it differs from active trading, which generates more costs than most people realize.
Coming Up
Every weekday morning I post what the AI decided and where the scoreboard stands. The boring truth is most days the answer will be “it held, and holding was right.” Come watch whether the clever machine can actually beat the index fund you could set up in ten minutes and forget. Get it by email so you don’t miss the day the experiment proves its point — in either direction.
Steve Rhode is not a licensed financial advisor. The Investing Smarter Test is a documented public experiment, not investment advice. All trades and decisions are logged publicly. Do not make financial decisions based on this experiment. For guidance on your own money, talk to a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor.
