Star Trader from '74 seems to be the inspiration for Trade Wars and Drugwars of '84―they're essentially ‘grind simulators’ with the player looking at sheets of numbers for a lot of the time. However, the apex of popularity of such games was likely in the early-mid 90s when office drones apparently sought to get their minds off the grind with a different grind, and countless knock-offs appeared for DOS.

Still, this ‘spreadsheet’ gameplay is rather different from box stacking. Some Game & Watch titles might be closer.