For the comp, I've done interday swings with the max amount of contracts the sim allowed (10 NQ + 4 ES), with a short bias as I figured there's always a chance we fall off a cliff and my play is akin to a Hail Mary. I logged in 4 times outside of RTH to adjust positions, and seen my ranking at 511, 12, 36, and now 69. The "account" was up 21K at one point. But those numbers are meaningless, as once I get caught on the wrong side of a steady move it's game over. Initially, I thought I'd participate in the contest and trade my RTH strategy using 25 ES, which is aggressive for me, but the math would give me a chance to crack the leaderboard if the strat produced a strong week. But to match the previous winner (99K) with 10 NQ + 4 ES, is way above my pay grade, hence the Hail Mary attempts.
John is correct, a competition set like this (as compared to let's say ES points gained) is not about trading, but account or margin optimization. It is all about maxing out your account in the most effective way when you are taking a position. And that is not using futures by the way. As I posted a few days earlier, because of the high margin requirements, it was impossible for some of the last contest's top 10 guys to make 65K in one day with 2 trades. But it was possible with options. The Leaderboard just doesn't differentiate between those two. Futures wouldn't even let you trade 10-10 ES and NQ (10 being the max. limit for the same asset), it is either 10 ES+3 NQ or 10 NQ+4 ES. When the market is in a rather tight range, that isn't bad for picking up a few thousands gains here and there. But when the market really moves, go with options. You can easily take 10-10 ES and NQ options and if you have margin left over, add a few RUT options and/or short Gold options. Now you know the trick, go ahead and happily max out!
Many use their first participation in a challenge to lean the rules and then practice / learn what they need to do to crack the top 10. The flaw I see by the CME Group is that they come across as big on risk management via their videos and requirements that you can not claim your prize if you win one until you watch the risk management video and then pass the test (questions). Reality, market conditions help determine risk management whereas the challenge encourages a trader to try to find a way to maximize the position size regardless to market conditions. Simply, if this was a real money account of 100k and market conditions was poor for your trading style...you will not be trading or trading with the bare minimum like 1 contract. That's what a real pro trader will do which is why Bob Iaccino (the pro to trade against) does not trade on some of the 5 days during the challenge. wrbtrader
I can not check the leader board because I'm not a participant in this specific challenge or because I'm currently in my home in one of the restricted countries. He usually makes no more than 30 trades in any particular challenge but I do wish the CME Group setup so that the trade logs become available upon completion of the challenge for others to view and general statistics including the complete list of the ranking for all participants. I understand why they don't reveal the info during an open challenge but it should become available when the challenge completes. wrbtrader
That is available even during the competition, downloadable in CSV. IIRC some 1200 people singed up but only about 700 made a trade.
Can you download it and post it here in the thread in csv or IIRC for the 1200 participants or even just a screenshot...thanks. Not a problem if you're not able to do it. Yet, I do know its available to a participant. In contrast, I was wondering if its available to someone that's not a participant. If a non-participant can download that info...what's the direct link ? Regardless, I can do it myself when I return back to the U.S. in 12 days assuming it will still be available after the challenge completes. I'll then just log into my CME dashboard. On another note, I wonder why the CME Group didn't make two separate groups for the challenges for traders of Futures and traders of Options instead of combining it into one group for the challenges ? wrbtrader
I agree, they should have 2 different groups, futures and options. Here it is, I uploaded the same data twice.
That was one underwhelming FOMC announcement. We moved like 5 ES points top. Anyhow, I went full pig before 2 pm and tried to max. out on margin. I had 10-10-10 of ES,NQ and RUT options, long of course, because the Fed isn't going to surprise the market with something nasty. I threw in 10 Gold futures short for good measure and I was still only at 87K margin. The biggest winner was the gold short, that made 2.5K the rest was breakeven, NQ making a few hundreds. Just shows that in a slow market futures actually beat options.