We are happy to announce the leaderboard winners for March and April. This is an optional contest at Jigsaw that picks up trading data from the Jigsaw platform in real time and rates traders over time by consistency. P&L does NOT factor into the rating. It is purely done on consistency but usually the most consistent trader has the highest P&L anyway. MrGekko wins March - his trading style is already quite well know and March was another very consistent and profitable month for him. Lot's of people have asked about the extreme ratio of winning/losing trades. How is he able to have such large winners compared to the losers? That's clickbait if ever there was any... Scotty wins in April - great to see a new face up there and someone that's only been with Jigsaw since December. As you'll see - Scotty was very focused and very disciplined in March and then in April he started to ramp it up. This is a must see for any aspiring but undisciplined trader. Not that many trades, not that much time at the screen but huge improvements over just a few months. To see the details on Scotty's improvement, both traders P&L details, click here.
Looks very nice but at the same time very strange. Who is trading that small that he makes or loses only 10 or 20 US$ per day and then the next month he is suddenly a big player and makes something like 2,000 per day ? How did his clip size change from March to April ? Jumping from being a 1 lot trader to a 20 lot trader within a week ? Never seen this in real life, even Tom Baldwin needed about a year to get himself up to trading 100 lots. This sounds a bit strange, it seems like somebody has reset his demo account from balance 10,000 to balance 100,000 Not sure if this has been asked already in the past, but are the participants in the leaderboard all trading live accounts, or are there sim/demo accounts too ?
Thanks for the reply. Good points raised. There's a mix of live & demo traders. It's an opt-in thing and it's absolutely an educational tool. By aiming for consistency over P&L, it teaches traders the benefits of patience, and not swinging for the fences. I watch a lot of retail traders trying to get to profit. In most cases, it's pretty ugly. Each week something new, regular blow ups, highs & lows. Some for 20 years. Scotty is on Demo (with realistic fills) - you can see that in his trade list if you click and drill down into it. I think we should consider the positive aspects of what's been achieved here. How many demo traders do we know that have the patience to do what he did? How many demo traders are even taking it remotely seriously? How many demo traders stick to their plan? There's no off plan trading, no revenge trading. There is evidence of consistency and patience. There does appear to be edge in what he's doing. This is a trader that has the makings of being consistently profitable. He'll no doubt have some setbacks when he goes live - but he is well on the way. That's what the leaderboard is all about - crafting traders through good habits. Those with good habits rise to the top, those with bad habits see that occur and emulate it. So I'm told anyway. Not everyone will see it my way, of course. Many will just see a demo trader won and shout "FAKE" from the rooftops. Still - I think Scotty deserves credit for moving in the right direction.
Hi Peter, thank you very much for the open and honest answer, and the insights you share. I like your positive attitude towards your traders, kudos to you
Personally, I agree with your concerns(?). Sim trading only good to reveal what doesn't work. That is... any strategy that doesn't work in sim surely isn't going to work with real money. But "succsssful sim" does not = making money. To make money you have to know the market and know yourself... which means becoming conditioned to money stress and the discipline to cope with it. (It's not merely an issue of "sim vs real money".... it's also how much real money*? If you're trading real money in an amount which you deem "inconsequential", results don't matter as you're not under real money stress. I recall years ago some guy got ink for trading the Fidelity Select mutual funds for bigger gains than just about anyone else. When queried, "how much of your portfolio is traded in this fashion?" He said, "about 3%". When asked "where's the rest of your money?", he said "T-Bills". DUH!) One trader on ET recently revealed that he's been studying TA for 25 years and trading Sim for 10 years... "always makes money sim, but hasn't made a nickel with real $$$". No surprise to me. If you're making money, no explanation necessary. If you're losing money, no explanation justifies. * Should be "all of your mother's money". If you lose big, not only would you "never stop hearing about it", but she may come to live in your basement. That's REAL pressure!
SIM is a tool and as you point out - it's often used unwisely. This doesn't make it useless. Prop firms use it for their interns - traders have to perform there before getting a live account. What we are pushing people towards is the same thing. Develop true consistency, then take the steps to a live account. I doubt that someone is consistent on SIM for 10 years but not able to go live. You know how people are on the interweb.... I'd imagine the reality is that they might have a +ve P&L after 10 years on SIM - but so would a lot of coin tossers. I doubt that trader has been trading day in, day out on SIM, green most days, able to recover from an early loss, consistently trading their plan, knowing why they are getting in and out. Trading SIM for 10 years based on 2 lines crossing a fibonacci cloud with a moon-phase Gartney harmonic time of the month reversal pattern - might yield a random profit but it's not really trading. Half the reason that people mess up when they go SIM to live is they don't believe anyway. They are trading hocus they got on line with no actual knowledge of the cause of the moves they trade. Getting confident in understanding a market behavior, then honing your execution on demo, then going in with small money is the most sensible way to approach trading in my opinion. But that is just an opinion.