I Gave My Goldfish $50,000 to Trade Stocks

Michael Reeves · 13.7M views · 2022-03-31 · 15:19

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Overview

Michael Reeves rigs up a camera and software that tracks a goldfish's movements to choose stock trades, tied to wallstreetbets sentiment. It is a comedic programming and electronics stunt.

On Hacker News

Mostly invoked as a joke in threads about monkeys or darts beating professional stock pickers, and about loose definitions of AI.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2022–2025

Topics

Satire & parody Investing & personal finance Computer vision, speech & NLP

What people said

Bender · 2025-12 · Joke / meme
This experiment was also performed with a fish [1] though it was only given $50,000. Spoiler, the fish did great vs wall street bets . [1] - [VIDEO] [video][15 mins]
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Modified3019 · 2024-07 · Joke / meme
Fish were an excellent choice. They are very versatile: [VIDEO] (“I Gave My Goldfish $50,000 to Trade Stocks”)
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dilippkumar · 2023-11 · Joke / meme
It doesn’t even have to be software. This camera tracking a goldfish to pick stocks is AI by this definition: [VIDEO] Update: A coin toss meets this definition.
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Sources

Video by Michael Reeves, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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