They Gave An AI Tomorrow’s Headlines. It Still Went Broke.
Elm Wealth handed an AI tomorrow’s front page and let it trade ahead of the news. It surged to $3.2 million — then blew up. So did the reporter racing it. The most expensive lesson in finance, offered to you for free.
Capital Wealth Daily · Analysis by Sean Anees Saifi · June 20, 2026
Even with the answer key, the math of leverage still doesn’t work in your favor.
The Crystal Ball
Here is the cleanest investing experiment I’ve seen in years. Elm Wealth runs something called the “Crystal Ball Challenge.” They hand you tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal front page — the actual one — with only the day’s market move blacked out, and they let you trade ahead of the news. You know what happens before the world does. It is the edge every trader fantasizes about.
And it is a slaughterhouse. Two years ago, Elm ran 120 finance professionals through it. Given literal tomorrow’s headlines, they only broke even on average, and one in six lost everything. About 60,000 amateurs took the same test and did worse. Knowing the future, it turns out, is not the hard part.
Grok Got The Future And Still Lost
This year Elm revived the game with artificial intelligence, and Journal columnist Spencer Jakab took on Grok, the AI built by Elon Musk’s xAI. For a while the machine looked unstoppable: Grok borrowed heavily, pressed its bets, and surged to $3.2 million by Round 11. Then Jakab, trailing badly, decided to bet big to catch up. He guessed wrong on how the market would react. And so, on the very same headline, did Grok.
That is the whole lesson in one anecdote. The headline wasn’t the problem — markets react unpredictably to news that looks obviously “good” or “bad,” and a stock can fall on a blowout quarter. What sank both the human and the machine was the same thing: they sized their bets too aggressively, and leverage turned being almost right into being completely broke.
Knowing what happens tomorrow doesn’t save you. Borrowing against it is what kills you — the AI proved it as fast as the humans did.
The Man Who Now Sells Index Funds
Here’s the part that should stop you cold. Elm Wealth’s founder is Victor Haghani — a former partner at Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund stuffed with Nobel laureates that used enormous leverage, was right about almost everything, and still blew up in 1998 spectacularly enough to rattle the entire financial system. The man who nearly broke the market by betting too big now spends his days preaching low-cost index funds and disciplined position sizing. He paid the tuition. He is handing you the diploma for free.
What This Means For The Book
This is the argument for everything boring we do. Your retirement money is built on diversified, low-cost ownership and dividends that pay you to wait — not on a high-conviction bet sized so large that being wrong once ends the game. The Crystal Ball Challenge proves the edge most people chase, knowing the news first, doesn’t even help if your position sizing is reckless. We size every sleeve so that a bad guess is a bad week, never a catastrophe. The goal isn’t to be the genius who hit $3.2 million in Round 11; it’s to still be in the game in Round 30, compounding quietly, when the geniuses have margin-called themselves out of it.
Themes & Tickers In This Article
LeverageTurns being right into being broke
SizingPosition size, not information, is the killer
Worried you’re holding a position sized like a Crystal Ball bet? Bring your statement; we’ll look at where the real risk sits — and right-size it before the headline does it for you.
