LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The United States Investing Championship today reported the final standings for the 2019 competition. The United States Investing Championship is a real money competition which gives up and coming traders an opportunity to show their talent on the world stage. Prior top performers include legendary traders such as Paul Tudor Jones and Louis Bacon. Participants specify an account number at the beginning of the year. Brokerage statements associated with that account are used to verify performance claims. The competition began in 1983 and ran for fifteen years. It was restarted in 2019.
In the current competition, the winner in the stock division, + 60.9%, was Leif Soreide, 39, from Davie Florida. Mr. Soreide has an MBA, Cum Laude, from the University of Miami. Mr. Soreide helped create the business www.securitieslawyer.com, to assist defrauded investors recover losses during the market crash of 2009. Finishing second in stocks, + 51.8%, was Sean Ryan. Mr. Ryan, who is the son of three time United States Investing Championship winner David Ryan, is currently serving in the army reserves. Finishing third, + 19.5%, is Alok Bhatia, from Singapore. Mr. Bhatia is a graduate of the Indian School of Business and has managed funds for JP Morgan Chase (based in London) and GE Capital (based in Tokyo). Finishing in fourth place was Zehua Zhou, + 16.6%. Mr Zhou, originally from China, came to the United States in 2007. He has a masters degree in Computer Science, and has worked as a software engineer for Microsoft, Amazon, and Zillow. In fifth position, + 11.6%, was Frederick Saffore, from Bangkok, Thailand.
In the Enhanced Growth division, which allows futures and long option trading, the winner was Travis Wilkerson, + 31.6%, from Idaho. Mr. Wilkerson is an army veteran who trades full time.
The United States Investing Championship also has a $1,000,000+ division. Winning that division was Sean Goodsell, + 10.1%. Mr. Goodsell, who resides in Redondo Beach, California, is a competitive ultra runner who started an organization called Karmaky in 2008 to help the poor and the homeless. After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to help the poor, Mr. Goodsell was forced to close Karmaky after two years of operation because the movement did not gain the support it needed to continue. Finishing in second place was Hsui-Ping Peng, + 3.1%. Mr. Peng is an engineer who was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States in 2002.
Over the years, the United States Investing Championship has attracted legendary traders, including Paul Tudor Jones, Louis Bacon, Dr. Edward O. Thorpe, Mark Strome, Mark Minervini, David Ryan, Doug Kass, Sheen Kassouf, Marty Schwartz, Frankie Joe, Tom Basso, Cedd Moses, Gil Blake, Robert Prechter, Jr., and Bruno Combier.
The standings appear on the website financial-competitions.com, and are carried by various media outlets. Financial-competitions.com provides a form to enter, as well as copies of articles from the past concerning the United States Investing Championship. Late entries are tracked from the date of their entry, so everyone starts with a gain of zero percent. The competition is run by Dr. Norman Zadeh, a former Stanford professor, former publisher of the magazine Perfect 10, and son of Lotfi Zadeh, the creator of fuzzy logic.
The 2019 competition had 96 participants. The current 2020 competition will have substantially more. “It’s hard to understand why so few participants had significant returns this year,” said Zadeh. “Normally in the past, with the market up as much as it was, we would have over 90% of the stock traders reporting positive results. Possibly the 24/7 tweeting that they faced was part of the reason that why it was so difficult for them to anticipate the market’s next big move.”
For more information, contact Dr. Norman Zadeh at normanz@earthlink.net, norman@financial-competitions.com, or call 310-409-7193.