US Investing Championship: Rules, Winners and Records

The United States Investing Championship is one of the few trading contests where a stranger can check your claim. Every participant names a real-money account before the start, and the organizer asks for the brokerage statements behind every return. In the 2025 contest, the best stock trader in the $20,000 division reported a gain of 969.8% in one year.

Numbers like that attract attention, and they also need context. I have traded since 1980, and I translated Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave books in the late 1980s. Prechter is one of the best-known past winners of this contest. I have never entered it myself, so this is an outside view: what the rules say, who won, which records stand and where the weak spots are.

You will learn how the four divisions work, what it costs to enter and how verification works in practice. You will also find the 2025 final standings, the leaders of 2026 with their dates, the records and an honest list of what the returns do not tell you. This article follows our editorial policy. It is for education, not investment advice, and past results do not predict future returns.

The US Investing Championship in 30 seconds

• What it is: a real-money trading contest for stocks, options and futures, started in 1983 by Dr. Norman Zadeh and restarted in 2019 after a long pause.
• Four divisions: a stock and an enhanced growth division (futures and long options allowed), each for accounts of $20,000+ and $1,000,000+.
• Verification: you name the account in advance and send monthly statements. The organizer uses your broker’s time-weighted return where available, otherwise a simplified cash-adjusted formula.
• 2025 winners: Martin Luk (+969.8%), Tito Adhikary (+2,115.1%), Law Wai-Sum, known as J Law (+252.3%), and Bob Weissman (+115.4%).
• The catch: one calendar year rewards extreme risk, and a winning year says little about the next ten.

What is the US Investing Championship?

The United States Investing Championship (USIC) is an annual contest in which traders from any country let the organizer track a real brokerage account for one calendar year, and the highest percentage return in each division wins.

There is no play money and no simulated account. Participants trade their own money, or a client’s or relative’s account, at their own broker. The organizer publishes monthly standings on financial-competitions.com and sends press releases to Business Wire each quarter, with the final standings around late January or early February.

The contest is open to everyone, in every country. In 2025 there were 579 entrants, according to the final standings of January 24, 2026. The 2026 contest had 707 entrants in the standings through August 31, 2026. You can check the current numbers on the official site, financial-competitions.com.

From 1983 to the restart in 2019

The contest began in 1983 and ran for about fifteen years, according to the organizer. Zadeh first ran the U.S. Trading Championship and later the United States Investing Championship, followed by the Money Manager Verified Ratings for large accounts. After a long break, the contest was restarted in 2019.

Not all sources agree on the first period. A notice by the CMT Association about the restart said the contest ran from 1983 to 1993. That cannot be the whole story, because the organizer confirms that Mark Minervini won the 1997 contest. I follow the organizer’s own wording here: about fifteen years.

Who runs it: Dr. Norman Zadeh

Norman Zadeh, also known as Norm Zada, is a mathematician who taught operations research and later managed money himself. According to the official site, he taught from 1975 to 1983, mostly as a visiting professor, at Stanford, UCLA, Columbia and UC Irvine. His father, Lotfi Zadeh, created fuzzy logic.

Zadeh tells a story about how the contest started. In 1983, he taught a course at UCLA on making money in the markets, opened a real $10,000 account and traded it in front of the class. By his own account, the account gained 140% in one quarter. He managed hedge funds from the early 1990s until 2012, and today runs the championship from Marina del Rey, California.

The four divisions: account size and risk

The championship sorts traders by two questions: how big is the account, and does it hold futures or long options? That gives four divisions. The two divisions with a $20,000 minimum carry the name United States Investing Championship. The two with a $1,000,000 minimum are called Money Manager Verified Ratings (MMVR).

Division	Minimum account	What is allowed
USIC stock	$20,000	stocks, ETFs, short selling, margin, writing options
USIC enhanced growth	$20,000	everything above plus futures and long options
MMVR stock	$1,000,000	same as USIC stock
MMVR enhanced growth	$1,000,000	same as USIC enhanced growth

Sources: financial-competitions.com, home page and rules page, read on October 9, 2026.

The stock division is stricter than its name suggests. You may go long or short, use leverage, trade foreign stocks and write options. Option spreads are allowed as long as the sold side is larger than the bought side. Futures, CFDs and long options move you into enhanced growth.

If your account is smaller than the minimum, you can still enter, but you pay for it in the math. With less than $20,000, your profit is divided by $20,000. With less than $1,000,000 in the MMVR, it is divided by $1,000,000. A $10,000 account that makes $5,000 therefore shows 25%, not 50%.

How verification works: statements, not screenshots

Verification rests on brokerage statements that the participant sends to the organizer. You name an account number before you start. For the monthly standings, you send your percentage gain and a copy of your monthly statements by email. At the end of the year, the organizer needs at most one copy of each monthly statement.

Deposits do not count as profit, but not every result is calculated the same way. The organizer accepts time-weighted returns computed by your broker, and the rules name Interactive Brokers, Fidelity, E*Trade and Schwab as examples. Where your broker does not compute one, the rules use a simplified formula: net deposits are taken out of the profit and the largest net deposit is added to the base. That is not a true time-weighted return, so results are not fully comparable.

A few extra rules close obvious loopholes. If your account is in a foreign currency and that currency moves more than 10% against the dollar over the year, your result is adjusted. Trading so fast that it produces thousands of pages of statements is not allowed, and disputes fall under California law.

What the rules do not describe is an independent auditor. The checking is done by the organizer from the statements. That is much stronger than a screenshot on social media, but weaker than an account held at a partner broker that reports directly to the contest, as in the World Cup Trading Championship.

How to enter: fee, deadline and late entry

The entry fee was $475 for the two USIC divisions and $1,000 for the two MMVR divisions on October 9, 2026. You pay one fee per division. You may combine several accounts to reach the minimum at no extra cost, and you may enter two divisions with two accounts, but then you pay two fees.

Timing decides your starting value. If you enter before January 2, your start is your account value at the close of December 31 of the previous year, and open positions may stay open. A late entry starts at the close of the day you enter, with a screenshot of the account value as proof.

Late entrants start at zero, not at their gain so far. If you enter on March 15, already up 10% for the year, the contest treats you as up zero percent on that day. Only your gain from that point appears in the standings. Appearing in the monthly standings is optional; you can also wait for the quarterly or final standings.

2025 final standings: the winners

The 2025 contest had 579 entrants and set three records, according to the organizer. The final standings were posted on financial-competitions.com on January 24, 2026, and the press release followed on February 2, 2026. All returns cover January 1 to December 31, 2025.

Division	Winner	2025 return
USIC stock ($20,000+)	Martin Luk, Hong Kong	+969.8%
USIC enhanced growth ($20,000+)	Tito Adhikary, Ph.D.	+2,115.1%
MMVR stock ($1M+)	Law Wai-Sum (J Law), Hong Kong	+252.3%
MMVR enhanced growth ($1M+)	Bob Weissman	+115.4%

Sources: financial-competitions.com, final standings 2025 (January 24, 2026); Business Wire press release of February 2, 2026.

Martin Luk’s 969.8% is a new record for the stock division, according to the organizer. He had finished sixth in 2024 with +283.1%. Second in 2025 was Rajnus Capital with +382%, third Adrian Law with +264%.

Tito Adhikary’s 2,115.1% is the organizer’s record across all divisions. The press release describes him as a Harvard Ph.D. and a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Second in his division was Bob Doviak with +857.3%, who had already taken part in the contest in the 1980s.

J Law, whose full name is Law Wai-Sum, won the million-dollar stock division for the second year in a row. Together with his record of +353.9% in 2024, the organizer gives him a two-year gain of 1,499%, against a total return of 47% for the S&P 500 over the same period. The 2024 release calls him a student of Mark Minervini, and he runs a YouTube channel under the name @jlawstock.

Bob Weissman won the million-dollar enhanced growth division with a record of 115.4%. The standings list him with Minervini Private Access, the trading service of Mark Minervini. Second was David Forehand with +108.3%, third Vikash Raniga with +95.7%.

2026 standings: leaders at mid-year and after eight months

At mid-year 2026, only 17% of the participants reported a profit, while the S&P 500 had gained 10.2%. That is the most useful number in the July press release. Of 688 competitors, only 115 reported a profit after six months, according to the release of July 28, 2026. Because interim reporting is optional, this is not a complete picture of all entrants.

Division	Leader after six months	Return to June 30, 2026
USIC stock	Dr. Tom Doub, Arcadia Analytics	+880.7%
USIC enhanced growth	Omar Barkawi	+1,656.3%
MMVR stock	Abdulmajid M. Al Qurashi	+73.6%
MMVR enhanced growth	Baran Kayhan	+349.5%

Sources: Business Wire press release of July 28, 2026; financial-competitions.com, six-month standings 2026.

After eight months, the same two traders still led the $20,000 divisions. In the standings through August 31, 2026, Tom Doub showed +1,038% in the stock division and Omar Barkawi +2,854% in enhanced growth. Both numbers are above the full-year records of 2025, but the year is not over, and four months are a long time at that level of risk.

I leave out the eight-month leaders of the million-dollar divisions on purpose. On October 9, 2026, the home page and the archive page of the official site showed different leaders for the MMVR stock division (+87.3% and +52%). The archive entry also carried a date that does not fit its own heading. Until the organizer corrects this, the mid-year numbers above are the reliable ones.

Winners since 2021: who won which division

Since the restart, the press releases give a complete picture of the winners each year. The tables below cover 2021 to 2025. The 2021 contest still had only one enhanced growth division; from 2022 on, it was split by account size. The 2019 and 2020 contests are not in the table because I did not check their final releases line by line.

Year	USIC stock ($20,000+)	MMVR stock ($1M+)
2025	Martin Luk, +969.8%	Law Wai-Sum (J Law), +252.3%
2024	Judy Lai, +449.1%	J Law, +353.9%
2023	Goverdhan Gajjala, +805.1%	Tanmay Khandelwal, +129%
2022	Afzal Lokhandwala, +447%	Sam Bhatia, +13.5%
2021	Pavel Sterba, +222.3%	Mark Minervini, +334.8%

Year	USIC enhanced growth	MMVR enhanced growth
2025	Tito Adhikary, +2,115.1%	Bob Weissman, +115.4%
2024	Brandon Frenchak, +482.6%	Brandi Archer, +90.7%
2023	Anthony Maffei, +309%	Derivatix Capital (Maziyar Yousefizad), +91.7%
2022	Hieu Tuong, +200.3%	Maziyar Yousefizad, +44.4%
2021	Salvador Palma, +186.3% (one division)	no separate division

Sources: Business Wire final results of January 24, 2022, January 25, 2023, January 26, 2024, January 27, 2025 and February 2, 2026.

The 2022 result of Sam Bhatia shows a different kind of win. His +13.5% looks small next to the others, but the S&P 500 lost 19.4% that year, according to the release. In a falling market, a modest profit with a large account can be the harder achievement.

Records: from Prechter’s 444% to 2,115%

Most records quoted today were set after the 2019 restart. The organizer announces them in its press releases, and I list them here with the year and the source. Older results from the first period are only partly documented online, so a record from the 1980s or 1990s may be missing from this list.

Record	Holder and year	Return
Highest return, all divisions	Tito Adhikary, 2025	+2,115.1%
USIC stock division	Martin Luk, 2025	+969.8%
MMVR stock division, one year	J Law, 2024	+353.9%
MMVR stock division, two years	J Law, 2024 to 2025	+1,499%
MMVR enhanced growth division	Bob Weissman, 2025	+115.4%
Best first quarter, any division	one trader, 2026	+1,678.8%

Sources: Business Wire press releases of January 27, 2025, February 2, 2026 and April 30, 2026.

The million-dollar stock record changed hands three times in four years. George Tkaczuk set it at +119.1% in 2020. Mark Minervini raised it to +334.8% in 2021, and J Law beat that with +353.9% in 2024, according to the releases of January 2022 and January 2025.

The best-known record of the first period belongs to Robert Prechter. In 1984, he returned 444.4% in a monitored real-money options account during the four-month U.S. Trading Championship, according to his author biography at his publisher Wiley and the CMT Association. It was a record at the time, and it made his name far beyond the Elliott Wave community.

Consistency is a record of its own, and it gets less attention. Sean Ryan, the son of David Ryan, is the only participant who entered every contest since the 2019 restart and reported a profit each year, according to the February 2026 release. His seven annual results add up to a combined 6,232%, against 205% for the S&P 500 from the end of 2018 to the end of 2025.

Famous past participants: what is documented

The organizer lists many famous names, but it publishes results for only a few of them. The official site names Paul Tudor Jones, Mark Minervini, David Ryan, Louis Bacon, Edward O. Thorp, Marty Schwartz, Tom Basso, Robert Prechter, Gerald Appel and others as prior participants. For most of them, I found no official result from their year.

Mark Minervini is the best-documented case. The organizer confirms that he won the 1997 contest and the million-dollar stock division in 2021. His own author biography says he entered in 1997 with $250,000 of his own money and won with a 155% return, trading only stocks long. That figure comes from Minervini, not from the organizer. He buys growth stocks as they break out of a consolidation; the basics are in our guide to breakout trading.

David Ryan is called a three-time winner of the contest by the organizer. He worked with William O’Neil and is one of the traders in Jack Schwager’s interviews; you can read more about that series in our article on the Market Wizards books. I do not give his winning years or returns here, because I found no primary source for them.

Paul Tudor Jones is the name most often linked to the contest. The organizer lists him among the prior top performers, but I found no published standing with his return. So the honest statement is short: he took part, according to the organizer. For a wider look at proven track records, see our overview of the best traders in the world.

US Investing Championship vs. World Cup Trading Championship

Both contests started in 1983, both use real money, and they measure different things. The USIC is a contest for stock traders first, with futures and options as an option. The World Cup of Robbins Trading is a pure futures and forex contest. If you want to compare the two in depth, read our guide to the World Cup Trading Championship.

	USIC	World Cup
Markets	stocks, ETFs, options, futures	futures, forex
Minimum account	$20,000 or $1M	$10,000 (annual futures)
Broker	your own broker, any country	partner brokers of the contest
Verification	statements sent to the organizer	data from the partner broker
Best-known record	+2,115.1% (2025)	+11,376% (Larry Williams, 1987)

Sources: financial-competitions.com and worldcupchampionships.com, read on October 9, 2026.

The biggest practical difference is the broker. In the USIC, you keep your existing account, which makes entry easy for stock traders. In the World Cup, the account sits with a partner broker, which makes the data harder to manipulate. The record gap is also telling: futures leverage makes much larger percentages possible, as the story of Larry Williams shows.

Criticism: what the returns do not tell you

A one-year contest rewards the trader who takes the most risk and happens to be right. That is not a flaw of this championship in particular; it is the nature of every ranking by return. Keep the following points in mind when you read the headlines.

One year is a very short track record

A single calendar year says little about skill. With hundreds of entrants, someone will post a huge number by luck alone. The organizer itself shows the other side: at mid-year 2026, 83% of the participants did not report a profit, in a year when the S&P 500 was up. A true edge shows up over many years, not in one ranking.

The returns hide the risk

The standings show the gain, but not the drawdown. A trader who makes 900% with concentrated positions may have been down 50% along the way. The tables publish no volatility, no maximum drawdown and no position sizes. If you want to judge a trader, those are the numbers you need, and our guide to risk management explains why.

You see the survivors, not the losers

Appearing in the monthly standings is optional, and the lists mostly show traders in profit. The 2026 press releases name traders with gains of 10% or 40% and more; everyone who does not report stays anonymous, whatever their result. One trader led a division after the first quarter of 2026 with a record +1,678.8% and no longer appears in the April and later standings. The site gives no reason, so I draw no conclusion about the person, only about how little a leader board tells you.

The contest is also a marketing stage

The organizer openly sells visibility, and many participants enter for exactly that. The FAQ says the main reason to take part is a documented track record for managing money or starting a newsletter. Several winners run trading services or courses, and a quote by Zadeh praising Minervini appears on Minervini’s website. None of this proves anything wrong, but it is worth knowing when a title is used in advertising.

What traders can learn from the championship

The most useful lesson is not in the top returns, but in the 17%. If only about one in six participants reports a profit after half a year, even in a rising market, take that as a warning that beating the index is hard. Plan your position size before you think about returns; our article on position sizing shows how.

The second lesson is the value of a verified record. The contest forces participants to keep statements, report a comparable return and show their numbers every quarter. You can do the same for yourself without entering: write every trade in a trading journal and measure your result against the index over several years.

My verdict on the US Investing Championship

In my opinion, the USIC is a good filter for claims, and a poor guide for choosing a trader to follow. It is far better than an unverified screenshot, because a real account and real statements stand behind every number. That alone puts it above most trading contests on the internet.

A title is a starting point for questions, not an answer. Before I would trust any winner, I would want to see several years, the drawdowns and how the trader sizes positions. The consistent traders, like Sean Ryan with seven profitable years, interest me more than the record holders. And if you enter yourself, treat the contest as a discipline exercise, not as a race you must win.

Frequently asked questions about the US Investing Championship

What is the US Investing Championship?

The US Investing Championship is a real-money trading contest that tracks a participant’s brokerage account for one calendar year. It was started in 1983 by Dr. Norman Zadeh and restarted in 2019. Traders compete in four divisions by account size and risk.

Who won the 2025 US Investing Championship?

Martin Luk won the $20,000+ stock division with +969.8%. Tito Adhikary won the $20,000+ enhanced growth division with +2,115.1%. In the million-dollar divisions, J Law (+252.3%) and Bob Weissman (+115.4%) won, according to the final standings of January 24, 2026.

Who is J Law?

J Law is the trading name of Law Wai-Sum, a stock trader from Hong Kong. He won the $1,000,000+ stock division in 2024 with a record +353.9% and again in 2025 with +252.3%. The organizer describes him as a student of Mark Minervini, and he publishes on YouTube as @jlawstock.

How much does it cost to enter?

On October 9, 2026, the entry fee was $475 for the USIC and $1,000 for the Money Manager Verified Ratings. You pay one fee per division. The minimum account is $20,000 or $1,000,000; smaller accounts may enter, but the profit is then divided by the minimum.

Is the US Investing Championship legit?

Yes, it is a real contest with real accounts, but the checking is done by the organizer. Participants send brokerage statements, and the return is a broker’s time-weighted return or the organizer’s simplified cash-adjusted calculation. The rules describe no independent auditor, so read the results as verified by the organizer, not as audited performance.

Did Paul Tudor Jones win the US Investing Championship?

The organizer lists Paul Tudor Jones among its prior top performers. I found no published standing with his year and return. Documented winners from the first period include Robert Prechter in 1984 and Mark Minervini in 1997.

When are the results published?

Monthly standings appear on financial-competitions.com, usually a few weeks after each month ends. The organizer also sends press releases to Business Wire, typically around late April, late July and late October. The final standings of a year follow in late January or early February.