Day 25: My AI Screened Almost 1,900 Stocks and Said No to All 8 (July 2026)

I am not a licensed financial advisor. This is a documented public experiment, not investment advice. Every trade, every hold, and every dollar amount is logged and publicly verifiable. See the pre-registration post for the full rules of this experiment.

This is Day 25 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 AI ran its widest scan yet — nearly 1,900 stocks and ETFs, close to the whole investable market it’s allowed to touch — and walked away from every single one of them. So it held everything it already owns and made no new buy.

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.

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 25 (July 29, 2026)

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?” Quote timestamp for today’s figures: 2026-07-29T18:13:54Z (about 2:14pm ET, with SPY’s last trade at $737.645 and the market still open).

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.

The AI account is at $1,001.14, up $1.14 from its $1,000 starting point. The S&P 500 twin sits at $991.10, down $8.90. The AI is $10.04 ahead — about 1 percentage point. 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. Both max drawdown figures are carried from earlier lows (a $1,013.37 AI peak on Day 13, an SPY trough at the end of June); today’s account sits about 1.2% below that old peak, which is a smaller dip than the worst one on record — so no new low today.

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 trades, same percentages, just 10× the starting money:

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 $10.04; scaled to $10,000 that same gap is $100.40 — 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.

Q2 earnings season is still in full swing, and a good chunk of the stocks the AI looked at closely today had just popped 5–20% in the days before its scan, or were sliding hard on bad news — exactly the kind of setup that tempts a person to chase the winner before they “miss it,” or grab the beaten-down name because it feels cheap. A human staring at that lineup feels the itch to act. That itch is what turns a disciplined plan into a gambling habit.

The AI felt none of it. At the open this morning it ran its widest scan to date: 1,886 stocks and ETFs — nearly the entire universe it’s allowed to consider — sorted into 12 clusters and narrowed to a 40-name shortlist. Before it even started deep research, it cut 10 of those names on hard, checkable rules: eight (RNG, LGN, PUMP, BRKR, STRL, ATHM, ALGM, and PMN) had a bid-ask spread too wide to trade cheaply, a ninth (WWW, Wolverine World Wide) failed that same liquidity test, and a tenth (TALK) turned out not to be a real opportunity at all — it’s already locked into a signed, all-cash buyout at a fixed price, so there’s no upside left to capture by buying it.

That left 8 real finalists, and the AI did full research — earnings dates, valuation, technical trend, SEC filings, recent news — on every one of them: Arlo Technologies (ARLO), Marathon Petroleum (MPC), USA Rare Earth (USAR), Five9 (FIVN), CAVA Group (CAVA), Disney (DIS), the Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX), and the iShares MSCI Mexico ETF (EWW). Every one of the eight got a no. Here’s the reasoning it logged:

“HOLD all three positions; take no new buy. FUNNEL HONESTY: discovery ran the v2 whole-universe (1,886 names → 12 clusters → 40-name slate → deep research). It triaged OUT 10 named slate names before deep research: RNG, LGN, PUMP, BRKR, STRL, ATHM, ALGM, PMN all on the objective liquidity gate (bid/ask ≥0.25% spread), WWW on liquidity, and TALK as a HARD_RED_FLAG (already under a signed all-cash UHS merger at $5.25 — not an active investable name). It deep-dived 8 finalists and I personally evaluated all 8 — I pass on every one: ARLO (P/E 47, ADV ~1.1M below the 2M guideline, +7% pop straight into an 8/6 earnings print), MPC (extended +97% off its low / ~5% under its 52wk high into an 8/4 print), USAR (pre-revenue, TTM net loss ≈ -$298M, active downtrend/falling knife, event-clustered 8/10), FIVN (P/E 38, 93% of 52wk high, 8/6 print), CAVA (falling knife -35% off high, active cyclospora traffic hit, P/E 131, 8/11 print), DIS (12-month downtrend below its 200d, buying weakness into an 8/5 print), COPX (copper-miner ETF below its 50d, momentum DOWN, macro/tariff-driven falling knife), EWW (Mexico ETF below its 50d, drifting lower, ADV below 2M). Common disqualifiers: nearly all carry a binary earnings print inside the holding window, and the rest are extended chases or downtrends — none is a clean, checkable price/fundamental setup, so buying any would be chasing rather than merit. Cash earns broker interest and is the correct default. HOLDINGS, judged fresh against each entry thesis: BRK.B ($187, +4.0% vs $490.09 entry, ~18.7% of book) — quality_value_ballast thesis CONFIRMING, well above its ~$470 kill line, no earnings binary; HOLD (no fresh entry-quality catalyst today to justify a scale-up, so no add). XBI ($150, -0.26% vs $148.48, ~15%) — trend thesis STILL DEVELOPING, price sits well above the $142/2-close kill line, no sector fire-alarm; HOLD. VWO ($93, -6.78% vs $61.25, ~9%) — sector/regional EM sleeve, DEVELOPING; it is above the ~$55/2-session kill line and nowhere near the -15% backstop, no objective exit trigger; HOLD but WATCH $55.”

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.

What holding means for the strategy:

This is a buy-and-hold experiment. Most days should be hold days. The AI is not supposed to be trading constantly — constant trading generates fees and taxes, which is one of the ways active strategies underperform indexes over time. So today’s hold is the expected behavior, not a cop-out — and today it’s backed by unusually thorough work: eight names taken seriously and rejected on their own specific merits, not a coin flip and not a tool failure. The three existing positions stayed put too, each re-checked against its own thesis rather than left on autopilot: Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) is up 4.0% from its purchase price and nowhere near its roughly $470 exit floor, with no earnings event to worry about. XBI (the biotech sector ETF) is essentially flat — down 0.26% from its purchase price — and comfortably above its $142 stop, with the trend thesis still developing. VWO (the emerging-markets ETF) is down 6.78% from its purchase price — the weakest of the three, and the one the AI is watching most closely for an exit if it closes below roughly $55 — but it hasn’t hit that line yet. None of the three tripped their kill criteria today, so none of them moved. Cash — $570.03 of the $1,001.14 total, alongside $431.11 in equity — sits uninvested, earning interest while it waits for a setup that actually clears the bar.

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 I’m showing you two links: a referral link (we both get a small bonus or free money if you sign up through it) and a plain direct link (I get nothing). Your choice, never required. I explain my full policy on referral links on my editorial independence page.

• Vanguard — the low-cost gold standard. Buy VOO directly; ~0.03%/yr. Best if you want the cheapest DIY option. No referral program → one link only: vanguard.com.
• Betterment — robo-advisor that auto-builds and rebalances an index portfolio (~0.25%/yr). → referral link (we both get a bonus) or plain link (I get nothing).
• Acorns — rounds up 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 itself runs on; fine for buying VOO/SPY and leaving it alone. → referral link (free fractional share, $5–$200 value, 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 25 days, here’s exactly where it stands: the AI is $10.04 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.

And if you’re carrying debt alongside any investing impulse, worth a read: the research on whether to invest or pay off debt first. The answer is more nuanced than most financial advice acknowledges.

Transparency: The Full Log Is Public

Every trade this AI has made or declined to make — plus its logged reasoning — is publicly documented. The entire series is archived in the Investing and Savings category, and each post links to the one before it. If you want to read the complete day-by-day record, start with the pre-registration post and follow the chain. The last published entry before this one is Day 24, which covers the day the AI’s screening tool ran clean and rejected all nine finalists it researched.

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 documented in this series. 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: The AI looked at almost 1,900 stocks and didn’t buy a single one. Doesn’t that seem impossible?
A: It sounds extreme, but it’s exactly what a strict, honest rulebook produces on a lot of days. The AI isn’t looking for “a decent stock” — it’s looking for a setup with no earnings report due in the next few trading days, a price that isn’t already stretched, and a trend that isn’t actively falling apart, all at once. Out of 1,886 names, 8 made it to full research, and every one of those 8 tripped at least one of those rules. Zero qualifying names isn’t a glitch in the system — on a market-wide basis, on any given day, it’s often the honest answer.

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. Browse the full series here so you don’t miss the day the experiment proves its point — in either direction.

This is what I’m seeing after over 30 years of helping people with money and debt. This experiment is a transparent public test — not a recommendation. Only you know your full financial situation. Take this as input for your thinking, not a directive. Nobody gets to tell you what to do with your money. Not me, not anyone.

Next up: Day 26 — the AI held again, and the index took the lead.

Steve Rhode The Get Out of Debt Guy | Consumer Debt Expert

Consumer debt expert & investigative writer. Personal bankruptcy survivor (1990). Washington Post award-winning author. Exposing debt scams since 1994.

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