Competition Details

Guidelines

PART I:

Each competitor will choose one stock from the S&P 500 to trade during the entire competition. You will submit your strategy before the competition begins (as later discussed). Your performance will be calculated by performance of your strategy over the entire competition timeframe. Your strategy for Part I must execute a minimum of eight trades by the end of the competition (March 20).

PART II:

Starting the second week of the competition you will have an assigned security that all competitors will trade. A week will be considered one Monday to Friday period (5 trading days). You must submit your strategy for each assigned stock by no later than 11:59 pm on Sunday of the trading week (i.e: a strategy starting on 3/2/09 must be submitted to the dropbox by 11:59 pm on 3/1/09). We will determine your performance each week by performance of your submitted strategies on their respective securities over the week in which they were traded. Each of your strategies for Part II must execute a minimum of two trades for the week it is trading.

Failure to submit a strategy for a round will result in the last place rank for that round. Failure to meet the minimum number of trades for a round will result in the second last place rank for that round.

Schedule

The actual competition, which begins Wednesday, February 25, will take place on the following dates:

Registration

Visit the registration page to create a trader acronym and account for you to use throughout the duration of the competition. YOU MUST BE A CURRENTLY REGISTERED STUDENT AT A UNIVERSITY AND USE YOUR UNIVERSITY EMAIL ACCOUNT (i.e., .edu) WHEN REGISTERING.

Upon registering, you will receive a TradeStation user name and password via e-mail, which will be necessary to download the TradeStation software and participate in the competition.

These TradeStation user name may be shared by several other competitors. Each user name may be signed in to TradeStation at only one location at a time; therefore, please do not disconnect other users if you are prompted to do so at login, and save your work frequently if you are building a strategy.

Note: Your trader acronym will be visible to all competitors when results are posted, so please create a non-identifiable name if you do not want others to view your ranking.

Scoring

Individual Competition

In determining the final results, your ranking in each part of the competition will determine your overall standing.

Parts 1 and 2 of the competition will be equally weighted and will be calculated by your rank among your competitors. Your score for each round is computed as (1+N - rank)/N.  N represents the number of participants in the round.  Rank is your place for the round based on the profitability of your strategy for the round. 

For example, if you place 10th in Part 1 and 30 people competed in Part 1, your score for Part 1 will be (1+30-10)/30 = 0.70.

Your ranking for part II will be an average of each of your weekly strategies. If your score is 0.66 in for Part 2, week1, 0.40 for Part 2, week 2, and 0.80 for Part 2 week 3.  Your score for Part 2 is 0.62 , the average for the three weeks.

If your score in part 1 is 0.70 and your score in part 2 is 0.62, your final score is: [(0.70) x (0.50) + (0.62) x (0.50)] x 100 = 66

The person with the highest final score will be deemed the winner.

Note: If you do not submit a strategy for a round, you will be ranked last for that round. If your strategy does not meet minimum number of trades for a round, you will be ranked second to last for the round.

Team Competition

In addition to the individual competition, there will also be a competition across universities.

Scoring for the university competition will be based on the final ranks of the top five finishers from each school. The university for which the sum of the ranks of the top five finishers is the lowest will be crowned champion.

The winning university will be awarded the TS trophy.