History of Trading Competitions: 1980s to Today

Traders have always argued about who is best. For most of the history of markets, there was no way to settle it: everyone traded different capital, different markets and different time frames, and reported results only when they were good. Trading competitions are the attempt to fix that — and their history shows how the idea moved from a handful of real-money championships to a global, rated discipline.

The 1980s: the first championships

Organised trading competitions took shape in the United States in the early 1980s.

• The United States Investing Championship, founded in 1983 by Norman Zadeh, tracked traders' real-money accounts over a calendar year and ranked them by percent return. Over the decades its participants included names that later became famous in the industry, among them Paul Tudor Jones, Mark Minervini and David Ryan, according to the organiser.
• The World Cup Championship of Futures Trading, run by Robbins Trading Company since the 1980s, asked entrants to trade a real futures account for twelve months; the highest percent return won.

The second event produced the most famous number in competition history. In 1987, Larry Williams turned $10,000 into $1,137,600 — a return of 11,376% — in the twelve-month contest. Ten years later his daughter Michelle Williams won the same championship in 1997 with about 1,000%. In the 2000s, Andrea Unger won the futures title several times, including three years in a row from 2008 to 2010.

What those early contests proved — and what they could not

The early championships established three ideas that still define competitive trading:

1. Rank by percent return, not by money made, so a small account can beat a large one.
2. Fix the period — everyone is measured over the same window.
3. Make results public, so a claim becomes a record.

But they also had limits. Entrants used their own capital, so starting conditions were never equal. The field was small, because entering meant risking real money. And a single annual result, however impressive, said little about whether a trader could repeat it. An 11,376% year is a legendary performance; it is also one data point.

The 1990s–2000s: simulators and student competitions

As electronic trading spread, competitions moved onto simulators. School stock-market simulations, and university events such as the Rotman International Trading Competition in Toronto, put students in front of simulated markets with identical starting conditions. Brokers ran paper-trading contests to attract new clients.

Simulation solved the equal-start problem and opened competitions to anyone. Its weakness was the opposite one: with nothing at stake and invented price feeds, many contests rewarded reckless all-in bets more than skill. See why trading contests get gamed.

The 2010s–2020s: crypto exchange contests

Crypto exchanges brought competitions to a mass audience. Trading contests became a standard marketing tool, and the largest events grew huge: by 2024, Bybit's World Series of Trading advertised prize pools of more than $10 million.

Most exchange contests, however, were built to grow trading volume. Rankings by volume or by absolute profit favour the largest accounts; separate contests on each exchange produce separate winners; and once a campaign ends, the result is forgotten. There were many competitions — but still no shared answer to "who is the best trader in the world?"

The missing piece: a world rating

Other competitive fields solved this long ago. Chess has had a rating system since the 1960s; tennis has had computer world rankings since the 1970s; golf, poker and esports all keep one ranked list built from many events. A single tournament crowns a winner; a rating turns many tournaments into a reputation. See ranking points vs Elo and ranking points in tennis and trading.

Trading competitions never had that layer — until rated tournaments.

Today: rated tournaments on live data

PnL World combines what each era got right:

• Equal start, like the simulators: every trader gets 100,000 Credits and the same markets.
• Real prices and real costs, like the real-money championships: live Binance data, order-book execution, fees, funding and liquidation rules.
• Percent return decides, as it did in 1983: place = final result, with ties broken by the smaller max drawdown.
• A calendar of events, from Hourly to the yearly PnL World Championship.
• One world rating: every rated finish earns points in the PnL World Rating (PWR), weighted by format, place and field strength, and points never expire. One verified account per person.

The goal is the one the first championships set out to reach: settle, publicly and fairly, who the best traders are — not once a year, but continuously.

Timeline

FAQ

What was the first trading competition? Informal contests existed earlier, but the best-documented organised championships began in the United States in the early 1980s, including the U.S. Investing Championship (1983).

What is the record return in a trading competition? The most cited record is Larry Williams' 11,376% in the 1987 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading.

Are trading competitions still held with real money? Some are. Others, including PnL World tournaments, use live market data with simulated execution, so every trader starts equal and no real-money positions are opened.

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PnL World tournaments are simulated: trades are executed against live market data, but no real-money positions are opened on any exchange. Nothing here is financial advice.

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