Hey tb, I hope alanmcg2 gets a place in the finals....I am he! I think a couple ahead of me were weekly winners, so hoping to sneak a spot.
I short term trade for a living, so have found it extremely challenging to find the time to do the contest justice. In a normal trading day in the real world it's not at all unusual for me to do 50+ trades a day, and usually hold anywhere between 20-40 open positions, so to trade in my style in the competition is a fair strain on the old grey matter as you could imagine, and when it comes to the crunch I need to give priority to the trading that earns me real money.
I can assure you I have never tried any dodgy way of getting orders filled, and personally doubt that is how the leaders have been doing so well. What I'm sure some are doing is finding liquid, high volume stocks, and just buying and selling the spread with limit orders, over and over again. It wouldn't be too hard to find 5 suitable stocks and just buy/sell over and over all day. Only 1 tick per trade maybe but it would soon add up. Against the spirit of the game?...I think so
Of course it's totally unrelated to trading the real market, because in the comp you never have to place your order at the back of the buy/sell queue. If only it was possible, you could do a Maserati every week lol.
In the comp I've been looking to ride the little intraday runs and ranges you see in many stocks, be it 2 ticks or 200, but will lock in a tick or break even at first sign of a stall. I've also had a couple of decent drawdown days where I've had to simply ignore the comp for a while to focus on my real stocks, especially with all this amazing recent volatility.
I'd hate to think how much in real terms the competition has cost me in missed opportunities by not giving 100% focus to my real trading, but I love working in a frantic atmosphere, and maybe that's why I stuck at the comp, I definitely enjoyed the challenge.
I also try to keep my blog current during the day, so it's all been getting a bit of a handful!
I've really enjoyed reading all the banter here, and well done everyone on your performances! Haven't seen a post from RamPage for a while, I wonder if he made it back into the Top 10 with his new entry as he had suggested.
If I have made the finals, I wouldn't put your money on me. I'd have to basically stop my real trading to give it a fair crack against the obvious favourites, but if I could stay close in the first week, then who knows. The 25 trade a day limit will certainly even the playing field a lot too. Also I'll be happy to post my daily trades here if I make it, if they are of interest.
Cheers