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Drive the Stock Market

Experience the ups and downs in a physical way
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This is a public roadway whose uphills and downhills replicate the last 100 years of the stock market's performance. Any national stock market index can be used, and if this idea is implemented in different countries, each country can use its own index. Now you can experience the climbs and treacherous falls of the stock market while driving to work! True investors-at-heart can compete to see who can drive on the stock market graphs in the most countries.

Signs posted along the side of the road display the current year as you drive forward in time and alert you to relevant historical/national events (e.g. financial events, presidential elections), so the driver can viscerally learn the connection between real life and the financial index.

The road itself can also be paved in special colors to indicate times of war vs. peace.

In order to prevent safety hazards during the Great Depression, care will have to be taken in deciding the scale and smoothness of this roadway. Of course, the entire graph needs to be normalized prior to construction, or else the end of the road will be 1000 times higher than the beginning, which may be feasible to construct in mountainous regions but probably not near major cities.

phundug, Mar 11 2013

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       Well, seeing as there are any number of places more than 1000 ft high, it might be better to find out which road, already in existence, matches the case.   

       Suggest some program that runs off map data to find the best match.   

       Then you can sell it as an app and let people find roads that match their own data for example, number of failed relationships in one decade, money spent on a fixing the car in similar period, my bank balance for the last twelve months (some very precipitous slope on K2) etc
not_morrison_rm, Mar 11 2013
  

       I strongly suggest doing the entire thing on a log scale, otherwise you're either not going to feel anything until you get to the last decade, or you're going to break every single bone in your body during the last decade.
MechE, Mar 11 2013
  

       //I strongly suggest doing the entire thing on a log scale//   

       Seems like a car would be easier, particularly if you don't live near a sawmill.
ytk, Mar 11 2013
  

       But I suppose the thing is that when travelling, the otherwise positive upslopes of unprecedented boom, are hard work and generally unattractive. Flip-reversewise, oligarch-buggering collapses are, to the traveller, thrilling white knuckle funrides. In short, the road needs to be constructed as the inverse of the stock chart.   

       Also, each stock market route could double as a stage in the international Tour de Finance (or Giro di Giro, for the pessimistic), Lance Armstrong permitted to participate as a symbol of capitalism gone steroidal.
calum, Mar 11 2013
  

       interesting. Could be a good attraction at the stock exchange
theircompetitor, Mar 11 2013
  

       For central bankers: "Tow the Stock Market"   

       This would involve a very heavy and poorly-balanced trailer, a winding road with a steep camber and twenty metres of slack in the tow-rope.
pertinax, Mar 17 2013
  
      
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