Market Pulse Challenge 26Q1: Winners and Some Surprising Results
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 We are pleased to congratulate the official, final winners of the Market Pulse Challenge for the first quarter of 2026: | Rank | Forecaster | Total Score | Prize | | ---: | -------------------- | ----------: | ----: | | M ℹ️ | Community Prediction | 889.838 | - | | 🥇 1 | MarcosO | 877.582 | \$716 | | M ℹ️ | Unweighted Aggregate | 869.431 | - | | 🥈 2 | Sergio | 865.825 | \$697 | | 🥉 3 | ksurapaneni | 837.574 | \$652 | | 🟠 4 | 🤖 Preseen-Chestnut | 766.850 | \$546 | | 🟠 5 | Adonis | 765.875 | \$545 | | 🟠 6 | pgodzin | 739.434 | \$508 | | 🟠 7 | lubossaloky | 680.178 | \$430 | In addition to the medalists, we recognize everyone who placed in the top 25 and won portions of the \$7,500 prize pool. Please see the complete leaderboard and payouts [here](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/market-pulse-26q1/).  ### How the Metaculus Community Performed Across the set of Market Pulse financial questions, the Community had strong results, with an average Baseline Score of +28 (possible values -230 to +183) and a positive score on 73% of them. While the Baseline Score depends heavily on the bounds of the question, the Community's performance indicates results significantly better than naive baselines. Under the efficient-market [hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis) in academic finance, it is long established that it's extremely difficult to reliably predict short-term price movements of stocks and other instruments. This is because much information and sophisticated analysis are already incorporated in market prices. (See for example, the work of Eugene Fama and his co-authors summarized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences [here](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2013/popular-information/).) Across the market-pegged questions (the stock vs stock and futures vs futures pairs, and the credit-spread and Treasury-yield levels) the Community's forecasts generally stayed close to where the market already was. On the relative-return pairs that was the right call: the Community's near-zero medians matched that efficient baseline and the distribution widths showed good calibration. On the credit and rate levels, the Community tracked the broad path of each series but, judged against a simple no-change benchmark, did not clearly beat it. On high-yield spreads in particular it underestimated the widening that ran through the quarter. With revenue forecasts, the Metaculus Community beat professional stock market analysts on 5 out of 7 companies, continuing the winning streak from previous quarters:  | Ticker | Outcome | Metaculus median | Analyst estimate used | Metaculus error | Analyst error | Winner | | -------- | ------: | ---------------: | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | --------------: | --------------------: | ------------- | | **AAPL** | 143.800 | 138.000 | 138.400 ([source](https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/29/apple-reports-record-breaking-q1-2026-earnings-apple-reports-record-breaking-q1-2026-earnings-143-7-billion-in-revenue-up-16xx-billion-in-revenue-up-xx/)) | 5.800 | 5.400 | **Analysts** | | **AMD** | 10.270 | 9.698 | 9.670 ([source](https://uk.investing.com/analysis/amd-earnings-preview-computing-demand-likely-to-lift-q4-sales-200622013)) | 0.572 | 0.600 | **Metaculus** | | **AMZN** | 213.386 | 211.300 | 211.490 ([source](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-report-q4-earnings-call-amzn-stock-live-updates-2026-2)) | 2.086 | 1.896 | **Analysts** | | **META** | 59.893 | 58.480 | 58.410 ([source](https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-q4-earnings-preview-ai-capex-wall-street-forecasts-facebook-2026-1)) | 1.413 | 1.483 | **Metaculus** | | **MSFT** | 81.300 | 80.900 | 80.310 ([source](https://apnews.com/article/db920987a30c23ccc6b50e698897902a)) | 0.400 | 0.990 | **Metaculus** | | **NVDA** | 68.127 | 66.930 | 66.200 ([source](https://www.asiae.co.kr/en/article/2026022606402901972)) | 1.197 | 1.927 | **Metaculus** | | **TSLA** | 24.901 | 25.100 | 24.493 avg / 24.519 med ([source](https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/earnings-consensus-fourth-quarter-2025)) | 0.199 | 0.408 avg / 0.382 med | **Metaculus** | <img height="339" width="718" src="https://cdn.metaculus.com/user_uploaded/image_XvxBg0G.png" /> Forecasts of earnings per share (EPS) were more indeterminate. In the cases where analysts estimated EPS under generally accepted accounting principles ([GAAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_Accepted_Accounting_Principles_\(United_States\))), although nominally tied with Metaculus at 3-3 (with AMD not counting due to a lack of analysts publicly forecasting GAAP EPS), Metaculus had a lower mean absolute error, \$0.386, as compared with analysts' MAE of \$0.405: | Ticker | EPS outcome | Metaculus median | Analyst GAAP / same-basis EPS | Metaculus error | Analyst error | Winner | | -------- | ----------: | ---------------: | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | --------------: | ------------: | ------------- | | **AAPL** | 2.84 | 2.662 | 2.68 ([source](https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/29/apple-reports-record-breaking-q1-2026-earnings-apple-reports-record-breaking-q1-2026-earnings-143-7-billion-in-revenue-up-16xx-billion-in-revenue-up-xx/)) | 0.178 | 0.160 | **Analysts** | | **AMD** | 0.92 | \~0.911 | N/A — public source found was 1.32 adjusted, not GAAP ([source](https://uk.investing.com/analysis/amd-earnings-preview-computing-demand-likely-to-lift-q4-sales-200622013)) | \~0.009 | N/A | **Excluded** | | **AMZN** | 1.95 | 2.051 | \~1.96 ([source](https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2026/02/alphabet-and-amazon-earnings-review-and-outlook)) | 0.101 | \~0.010 | **Analysts** | | **META** | 8.88 | 8.417 | 8.24 ([source](https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2026/02/microsoft-and-meta-earnings-review-and-outlook)) | 0.463 | 0.640 | **Metaculus** | | **MSFT** | 5.16 | 3.963 | 3.87 ([source](https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2026/02/microsoft-and-meta-earnings-review-and-outlook)) | 1.197 | 1.290 | **Metaculus** | | **NVDA** | 1.76 | 1.529 | \~1.49 inferred from 18.4% beat ([source](https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2026/03/nvidia-post-earnings-review-q4-2026-and-outlook)) | 0.231 | \~0.270 | **Metaculus** | | **TSLA** | 0.24 | 0.3873 | 0.30 GAAP avg/median ([source](https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/earnings-consensus-fourth-quarter-2025)) | 0.147 | 0.060 | **Analysts** | Finally and perhaps most intriguingly, on the question about the volatility index (VIX), we note the especially strong performance of the Metaculus Community, with an average Baseline Score of 50.2 over the six 2-week periods, achieving a strongly positive score on 5 of 6 questions. Academic research has found that normally the VIX can be hard to forecast. (See, e.g., Degiannakis (2008), “[Forecasting VIX](https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/96307/8/MPRA_paper_96307.pdf)”.)  The one miss came during the March 2-13 period, when the onset of the 2026 US/Israel-Iran war produced a spike in the VIX. Even there, however, we note that the Community, which placed its forecast entirely before the conflict began, had a remarkably fat right tail: <img height="443" width="599" src="https://cdn.metaculus.com/user_uploaded/Screenshot_2026-05-14_at_6.33.24PM.png" /> We additionally note that the actual outcome was in the Community's 94th percentile possibility, well encompassed in the fat tail. While the Community did not possess a perfect crystal ball to see the looming geopolitical shock, it did surprisingly foresee the near-term volatility risk meaningfully better than random chance. ### Market Pulse Challenge for Q2 2026: Now Open! Congratulations again to all who participated in Market Pulse for Q1 2026. There's still plenty of time to get on the Leaderboard for the new tournament, [Market Pulse Q2 2026](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/market-pulse-26q2/). The tournament has a total prize pool of \$7,500 and, unlike with prediction markets, does not require participants to put money at risk. You compete, you learn, and you potentially win part of the prize pool with no financial downside. So get started [here](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/market-pulse-26q2/), and we are excited to see you there.