We all know that new traders tend to lose money in the markets. Given that, I think the following game would prove to have some interesting results. The participants in the game: 30 people with little or no trading experience. Object of game: Each participant will be given a 1 million dollar futures account. The goal of the game will be to lose all the money in the account. The game will last one year. At the end of the year time frame the person with the smallest account wins $1,000,000. All the traders must return the funds in their accounts to the game funder at the end of the year time frame. If any trader manages to lose 95% of their account before the year period that person wins and the game ends early. Rules of the game: 1: Each participant can only trade the e-mini Nasdaq 100 futures. (same market for everyone) 2: Each participant can only trade 1 to 10 contracts. (this prevents them from trading some hugh 100 contract position and losing lots of money by luck) 3: Commissions are $5 per round trip per contract (IB commissions) 4: Each participant can only trade up to 5 round trip trades per trading day. (prevents them from losing money by overtrading) 5: Each participant cannot have any open positions at the end of the trading day. (force the guys to daytrade) Now let the worst trader win! What do you think will happen? Will the new traders actually make money because they are trying to lose money? If I had as much money as Bill Gates I would fork out the 31 million to actually run this game.
What a revelation if one did poorly at this contest but truly tried to win. Trading is a lot easier when funny money is on the line.
Have the experts trade with the intention of making money....and "book" the trades for the "house" - and take bets on which side wins.....(I bet on the house).....Trading leading indicators is pretty tough.... Make it a "zero sum game" - no commissions....
i bet it would work because your rule set would prevent the traders from losing in the normal ways: high commissions, overtrading, too much risk per trade, blowing up. All that would be left is their emotions, now working in reverse. You could also add a twist by saying that any gains in their account would go against them- i.e. if trader A's account is up $5,000 it means he is actually 5 grand in the hole from his own pocket. That would add the true stress of 'real money' at risk, again in reverse.... to top it off, maybe the profits you got from the experiment would be significantly more than the cost of paying off the winner....
How about actually giving the traders a little credit instead of insulting them with the immature games. Trading is a tough business and poking fun @ them isn't helping.
This is like "Brewster's Millions" meets the futures markets...I really like the idea behind the contest, and I agree, if one had the multi-billion dollar net worth to run it, it would be a heck of alot of fun... I think that it would, in fact, be extaordinarily difficult to lost 950,000/12 months or approx 80,000 per month/20 days=4,000 per day/10 contract(max)=20 NQ points per contract per day...In fact, I bet alot of the trades in which one would TRY to lose would in fact turn into winners because the trader would be trading with utmost certainty that they were entering a losing trade...just the opposite mentality that gets most traders into huge trouble...,they enter when they think the risk is the LEAST and usually it is the MOST... This would be a great experiment and I would love to read about the results...