Legendary Traders · World Cup Trading Championships
Kevin Davey
The Champion Who Won With His Worst Year
2005 second · 2006 first · 2007 second · over 100% every time
Last reviewed: September 2026. Contest results come from the organiser’s official historical standings. Everything Davey says about how he competed comes from his published interviews and his own author biographies, and is attributed as such. Complete Trader’s Edge has not audited any trading statement.
Kevin Davey entered the World Cup Championship of Futures Trading three years in a row and made more than 100% each time. He finished second in 2005 with 148.0%, won in 2006 with 106.7%, and finished second again in 2007 with 111.6%. The year he took the trophy was the weakest of the three.
That detail is the whole lesson. A contest ranks you against whoever else turned up that year, not against a target. Davey’s best result lost to a 278.0% year. His worst result won. What he controlled was the process that put him on the podium three times running, and he built that process before he entered, from the contest’s own history.
Kevin Davey at a glance
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Background | Aerospace engineer with an MBA, per his author biography |
| Style | Systematic, algorithmic futures trading |
| First account | $5,000, down 60% within a few weeks |
| Contest account | $15,000, which he says he was prepared to lose in full |
| 2005 World Cup | Second, 148.0% |
| 2006 World Cup | First, 106.7% |
| 2007 World Cup | Second, 111.6% |
| Best-known book | Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems (Wiley, 2014) |
| Business | KJ Trading Systems and the Strategy Factory workshop |
| Also writes | The monthly “Algo Q&A” column for Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities |
Who is Kevin Davey?
Davey is a US-based futures trader and one of the better-known teachers of retail algorithmic trading. His author biographies describe him as an aerospace engineer and MBA who has traded independently for around three decades. He runs KJ Trading Systems, teaches a strategy-development course he calls the Strategy Factory, and writes a monthly question-and-answer column on algorithmic trading for Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities.
His reputation rests on the World Cup record. It is a real-money contest, audited by the organiser, and his three results sit in the official historical standings. That is a stronger credential than most trading authors can point to, and it is also narrower than his marketing sometimes suggests. Both points matter, and both are covered below.
The record, year by year
| Year | Davey’s finish | Return | Who won |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Second | 148.0% | Ed Twardus, 278.0% |
| 2006 | First | 106.7% | Kevin Davey |
| 2007 | Second | 111.6% | Michael Cook, 249.7% |
Our arithmetic, not his. The median annual futures champion since 1984 made 251.8%. Davey’s winning 106.7% is well under half of that, and seven champions since 1984 have won with less. His two runner-up years, 148.0% and 111.6%, were each beaten by a year close to the median champion. On the scoreboard, 2006 was a year in which the field happened not to produce a big number. That is not a criticism. It is how contests work, and it is exactly what Davey planned for.
The $5,000 start
Davey’s own account of his beginning is unflattering, which is part of why it is worth reading. He started with a $5,000 account and lost about $1,000 in a week trading a moving-average crossover. His conclusion was that if the signal was wrong, the opposite signal must be right, so he reversed it. Within another week or two he had lost another $2,000. $3,000, or 60% of the account, gone in a matter of weeks.
He tells the story himself in the biography that runs with his books, and he calls the reversal a classic beginner’s mistake. It is. Flipping a losing signal assumes the market is punishing you on purpose, when a crossover that loses money usually loses it because it is noise in both directions.
Designing a strategy to hit a podium
The part of Davey’s story that deserves the most attention happened before he entered. According to his interview with Andrew Swanscott for the Better System Trader podcast, he was developing early algorithmic systems part-time around 2003. Looking at the 2004 results, he thought the system he was working on would have beaten that year’s winner.
Most traders stop at that thought. Davey tested it. He asked the brokerage for the first, second and third-place finishers going back five to ten years, built a small dataset, and worked out what return it historically took to finish in the top three. His answer was about 100% in a year. That became the design target, not the record, not the headline figure. He was explicit that he was not trying to be Larry Williams.
The result matches the plan closely. Three entries, three returns between 106.7% and 148.0%, three podium places. Whatever luck was involved in the exact finishing position, a strategy built to make roughly 100% made roughly 100%, three years running, under live contest conditions.
Davey did not try to win the World Cup. He tried to make the return that historically lands on the podium, and let the field decide the order.
The copper trade
Davey is unusually open about the luck in his winning year. In the same interview, he says a single copper trade in 2006 lifted the account sharply, and that without it he would not have won. He also described 2006 as the worst of his three years.
Put those two facts next to each other. The year he won was his weakest, and one position made the difference between winning and not. A trader less honest about his own record would leave that out. It is the most useful sentence in the whole story, because it tells you what a contest title is: a real result, shaped by process, finished off by circumstance.
What Van Tharp said
After the win, Davey wrote an article about it for Van Tharp’s newsletter. He had learned from Tharp’s home-study courses and expected a warm reception. By his own account, Tharp was dismissive: winning a trading contest, in Tharp’s view, was closer to reckless than impressive.
Davey says he was angry at first. On reflection he took a different lesson from it. The return was not the achievement. The achievement was setting a specific goal, designing a strategy to meet it, trading it live, and watching it work. A martingale could have produced a bigger number by luck. What Davey had done could be repeated, and he had repeated it.
A contest account is not a trading business
Davey draws a hard line between the two. He was willing to lose the whole $15,000 contest account, and he says he made that choice deliberately. The contest was a capped experiment with a known maximum loss. He has said that running a whole trading operation with the same go-big-or-go-broke attitude would be idiotic.
That distinction is the one most readers of contest results miss. A 100%-plus year on an account the trader has already written off is a different animal from a 100%-plus year on the money that pays the mortgage. The first tells you the strategy can make that number. It says much less about whether the trader would, or should, run it at that size with capital that matters.
Why he entered at all
Davey has said one reason he competed was that he genuinely did not know whether he was any good. A year-long real-money contest against other traders was a way to find out. Three years over 100% answered the question well enough that he moved to trading full time afterwards.
He has also said the contest left him with relationships that outlasted it, including a group of former World Cup winners who still meet regularly online. For a sport that is usually played alone, that is a notable side effect.
The books and the teaching
Davey’s best-known book is Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems, published by Wiley in 2014. It walks through the life of a systematic strategy from idea to retirement, with a heavy emphasis on killing weak ideas early and on Monte Carlo analysis of drawdowns. He has since self-published shorter books, including Introduction to Algo Trading (2018) and Entry and Exit Confessions of a Champion Trader (2019), a collection of entry and exit rules with TradeStation code. His MoneyShow biography lists five books in total.
The recurring themes across all of them are the ones from the World Cup story. Set the goal before you build. Assume every backtest contains some good luck that will not repeat. Decide in advance how you will know a strategy has stopped working.
Luck, backtests and after-the-fact explanations
Davey’s default assumption is that every backtest has good luck built into it. When a system looks excellent on historical data, some of that performance is fortune, and it will either disappear or reverse once the system trades live. He plans for live results to be somewhat worse than the test, and sizes accordingly.
He is equally sceptical of the stories traders tell after a system fails. Volatility changed, correlations shifted, the regime moved. His point, in the podcast, is that if you could have known that in advance, you should have said so before you lost the money. Explanations invented afterwards feel like understanding and are usually pattern-matching on noise.
Mind, Method, Money
Mind. Davey entered to find out whether he was good, accepted a mentor’s criticism after an angry first reaction, and credits luck openly in his own winning year. Each of those is a psychological skill before it is a trading one.
Method. Goal first, from data. He measured what it took to reach the podium, then built a system to hit that number, then traded it. Three podiums from three entries is the strongest evidence in his record, stronger than the single title.
Money. A $15,000 account he was prepared to lose, kept separate from the capital he lived on. The contest rewarded aggression; his own rule was that the same aggression with real livelihood money would be a mistake.
The counterweight
The title count gets inflated. The official record shows one World Cup win and two second places. Davey’s own MoneyShow and course biographies describe this accurately as finishing first or second in three consecutive years. The About page on his KJ Trading Systems site calls him a three-time World Cup winner, and at least one podcast write-up says he won three years running. Neither matches the official standings. The real record is impressive enough without the upgrade.
Three years is a short sample. The contest record covers 2005 to 2007. It is live, audited and consistent, and it is still three years of one account. It is not a decade of managing money through different markets, and it should not be read as one.
The winning margin came from one trade. By his own account, a single copper position decided the 2006 title. That does not make the win less real. It does mean the gap between first and second in that year was circumstance rather than skill.
The contest was an experiment with written-off capital. A 100%-plus return on a $15,000 account he was prepared to lose tells you the strategy could produce that return. It does not tell you what the same approach would return, or risk, at a size where the loss would hurt.
The teaching business is built on the record. Davey sells courses and books that lead with the championship results. That is disclosed and it is normal, and it is a reason to weigh the record on the official standings rather than on the marketing around it.
What actually transfers
- Set the target from the data, not from the headline. Davey ignored 11,376% and asked what it historically took to reach the podium. Whatever you are trying to pass, a prop-firm challenge or a personal goal, find out what the realistic threshold is before you design anything.
- Assume your backtest is flattered. Build the expectation of worse live results into your sizing from day one, instead of discovering it in month three.
- Separate experiment money from livelihood money. A capped experiment can be run aggressively. The account that pays your bills cannot. Decide which one you are trading before you place the first order.
- Credit luck in your wins, not only your losses. Davey’s honesty about the copper trade is the habit that stops a good year turning into overconfidence.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Kevin Davey?
A US-based systematic futures trader, author and trading educator. He won the 2006 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading with 106.7% and finished second in 2005 and 2007. He runs KJ Trading Systems and wrote Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems.
How many times did Kevin Davey win the World Cup Trading Championship?
Once, in 2006. He finished second in 2005 with 148.0% and second in 2007 with 111.6%. Some marketing describes him as a three-time winner, but the official standings show one win and two runner-up finishes.
What return did Kevin Davey make in the World Cup?
148.0% in 2005, 106.7% in 2006 and 111.6% in 2007, all on the organiser’s published record. His winning year was the lowest of the three.
What is Kevin Davey’s trading strategy?
He trades algorithmic systems in futures, built through a process of setting a goal, testing ideas, rejecting most of them, stress-testing survivors with techniques such as Monte Carlo analysis, and trading only what passes. For the contest, he designed his systems to target about 100% a year, the level that historically placed in the top three.
How much money did Kevin Davey start with?
His first trading account was $5,000, and he lost 60% of it within weeks. His World Cup contest account was $15,000, according to his interview with Better System Trader.
Is Kevin Davey’s book worth reading?
Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems is one of the clearer process books on systematic trading, especially on rejecting weak strategies early and understanding drawdown risk. It is a book about how to develop and evaluate strategies, not a book of ready-made systems.
Sources and further reading
- Contest results. The organiser’s World Cup historical standings, checked 27 September 2026. The full champion list is on our World Cup Trading Championships page.
- How he competed. Andrew Swanscott, “Kevin Davey: Designing Strategies to Win”, Better System Trader, for the podium target, the $15,000 account, the copper trade and the Van Tharp exchange.
- Background and early losses. Davey’s author biography as published with his books on Amazon.
- Books and column. His MoneyShow speaker biography, and the KJ Trading Systems About page, which is also the source of the “three-time winner” description discussed above.
Further reading
Contest champions, fund managers and the traders who quietly lasted all sit inside a longer story about what separates durable traders from brief ones. Greatest Traders tells eighty-six of those stories through the Mind · Method · Money lens.
Continue Learning
- The World Cup Trading Championships – every champion since 1984, and how to read a contest percentage.
- Larry Williams: The 11,376% Record – the number Davey deliberately did not chase.
- How to Trade Futures – margin, sizing and small-account arithmetic.
- Risk of Ruin: The Mathematics Every Trader Must Understand
- Position Sizing: The Most Important Decision in Every Trade
- The Three Pillars: Mind, Method, Money
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