World Cup Trading Championship vs U.S. Investing Championship: Same Year, Different Maths

Last reviewed: September 2026. Every result comes from the two organisers’ published standings and entry rules. The comparisons and medians are our own arithmetic, labelled as such.

The World Cup Trading Championships and the U.S. Investing Championship are two separate real-money trading contests. Both started in 1983. The World Cup is run by Robbins Trading in Chicago and covers futures and forex. The U.S. Investing Championship was founded by Norman Zadeh and covers stocks and options, with a division that allows futures. They score returns differently, count accounts differently, and set different minimums, which is why a percentage from one cannot be ranked against a percentage from the other.

Articles mix them up constantly, and Marty Schwartz’s 1984 title regularly gets filed under the World Cup. This page sets the two side by side, explains the differences that actually move the numbers, and shows what happens when you compare their recent champions directly.

The two contests side by side

Difference one: the market decides the leverage

A futures contract controls a position many times the size of the margin posted against it. On a $10,000 World Cup account, that means a trader can take on exposure a stock trader could only reach with options or heavy margin. This is the single biggest reason the World Cup’s all-time record is so much larger than anything on the U.S. Investing boards.

The U.S. Investing Championship recognised this when it split its divisions. The Stock division is the purer comparison for an unlevered or lightly levered stock trader. The Enhanced Growth division allows futures, which the Stock division does not, and it is where the contest’s own record, Tito Adhikary’s +2,115.1% in 2025, was set. Put a leverage-permitting division next to a leverage-restricted one and the gap between them looks like skill when much of it is instrument.

Difference two: how the return is measured

The World Cup’s entry agreements define net return as ending equity minus total funds deposited, divided by total funds deposited. Money added during the contest, including to meet a margin call, counts against you. It is a simple, money-in money-out figure.

The U.S. Investing Championship reports time-weighted returns. That method strips out the effect of deposits and withdrawals and measures the performance of the money that was actually in the account over each period. It is the standard used for fund reporting because it answers the question “how well was the money managed?” rather than “how much did the account grow?”

For most entrants the two methods land close together. For an account that adds money late, or withdraws heavily after a strong run, they can diverge. Neither is wrong. They answer slightly different questions, and that alone is a reason not to put two contest percentages on the same ladder.

Difference three: one account or the best of several

The World Cup’s entry agreements allow an entrant to run more than one contest account, and state that only the best-performing account is used for ranking. A trader can run an aggressive strategy in one account and a conservative one in another, and the leaderboard only ever shows the winner.

The U.S. Investing Championship’s year-end releases describe each entrant as selecting a real-money account to be tracked before the competition began. One account, chosen in advance. That does not make its numbers more believable than the World Cup’s, since both are real accounts, but it does remove one route by which the published figure can be the survivor of several attempts.

Difference four: the eras

The World Cup has published a champion for every year since 1984. The U.S. Investing Championship ran from 1983 until the mid-1990s, when it went quiet during an SEC investigation, and was restarted in 2019. That gap matters. The World Cup record is one continuous series across forty-two years of changing markets. The U.S. Investing record is two separate eras, and the early one is only partly reconstructable from surviving sources.

It also means the two contests hold very different kinds of history. The World Cup’s memorable names cluster in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s: Williams, Mike Lundgren, Andrea Unger. The U.S. Investing Championship’s best-known names split between the original era, Schwartz, Robert Prechter, David Ryan, and the modern one, where Mark Minervini’s 2021 result and a wave of international entrants dominate.

What happens when you put the recent champions next to each other

Both contests have run every year since 2020, so this is the fairest window for a direct comparison. We have set the World Cup annual futures champion against the U.S. Investing Championship’s $20,000+ Stock champion, the closest thing each contest has to a small-account flagship.

Our arithmetic, not theirs. The stock contest’s small-account champion printed the bigger number in four of the six years. The median World Cup futures champion across these six years made 333.5%. The median USIC $20,000+ Stock champion made 627.1%, almost double.

That reverses the usual assumption that futures contests produce the wilder numbers. The historical record says they did, in 1985, 1987 and 1997. The modern record says the stock contest now prints bigger winning years more often. We can suggest reasons, and cannot prove any of them. The modern U.S. Investing field is large and growing, from 124 entrants in 2020 to 579 in 2025, and the more accounts there are, the more likely it is that one of them lands an extreme year. The World Cup does not publish its field size, so the same test cannot be run on it. Small-cap momentum markets since 2020 have also produced unusually large moves for concentrated stock traders.

What the table does not show is a durable edge on either side. It shows six winners from two contests with different rules, which is exactly the kind of comparison this page is warning against. Read it as a correction to a common assumption, not as a ranking.

The names that cross over

We found very few names that appear in both records. Larry Williams’ famous result is a World Cup one. Marty Schwartz is the U.S. Investing champion most often mislabelled as a World Cup winner.

One overlap is worth flagging and cannot yet be resolved. A Michael Cook won the World Cup futures title in 2007 and 2014, and the World Cup stock division in 2011. A Michael Cook finished second in the U.S. Investing Championship’s $1,000,000+ Enhanced Growth division in 2022 and 2023. We have not confirmed that they are the same person, and we are not treating them as one.

The regulatory records

Each organiser has a regulatory matter on the public record that is worth knowing. Neither concerns whether a contest result was accurate.

• Robbins. In June 2003 the CFTC accepted a settlement from Robbins Futures and its president Joel Robbins, with a $120,000 civil penalty, over a failure to supervise employees’ handling of customer accounts, including accounts used in a commodity pool fraud run by others.
• Zadeh. In July 1998 the SEC issued a cease-and-desist order in a proceeding involving Prime Advisors, an investment adviser Zadeh co-owned. The order records that Zadeh administered the U.S. Investing Championship and the Money Manager Verified Ratings from 1983 to at least 1994, and Zadeh’s FINRA BrokerCheck report lists a $165,000 penalty against him in that matter.

Both matters are relevant to how much weight you put on a contest when it is used to sell a service, and neither tells you anything about a given year’s leaderboard.

So which record means more?

Neither, on the percentage alone. A contest title is evidence that one real account produced one return under one set of rules. Before comparing any two titles, ask five questions:

1. What market, and what leverage did it allow? Futures and Enhanced Growth results are not stock results.
2. How long was the contest? A quarter and a year are different games.
3. What was the minimum account? $500, $10,000 and $1,000,000 accounts behave differently.
4. How was the return measured, and on how many accounts? Net-on-deposits and best-of-several is not the same as time-weighted on one account chosen in advance.
5. Did the trader do it again? Repeat results in either contest are worth far more than any single year.

On the last question, both contests have their standouts. In the World Cup, Andrea Unger’s three straight annual titles and Kevin Davey’s three straight podium finishes. In the U.S. Investing Championship, Sean Ryan’s seven profitable entries in seven years since the restart, and Law Wai-Sum’s back-to-back $1,000,000+ Stock titles in 2024 and 2025.

Frequently asked questions

Is the World Cup Trading Championship the same as the U.S. Investing Championship?

No. The World Cup is run by Robbins Trading and covers futures and forex. The U.S. Investing Championship was founded by Norman Zadeh and covers stocks and options, with a division that allows futures. Both began in 1983.

Which contest has the bigger record?

The World Cup: Larry Williams’ 11,376% in 1987. The U.S. Investing Championship’s highest year-end return is Tito Adhikary’s +2,115.1% in the 2025 Enhanced Growth division. The two are not directly comparable because of differences in market, leverage and scoring.

Was Marty Schwartz a World Cup champion?

No. Schwartz’s 1984 title was in the U.S. Investing Championship. The World Cup’s 1984 champion was Ralph Casazzone.

Which contest is harder to win?

There is no way to say from the published data. The U.S. Investing Championship publishes its field size; the World Cup does not. Since 2020, the U.S. Investing $20,000+ Stock champion has posted a bigger winning year than the World Cup futures champion in four of six years, but that reflects field size, markets and rules as much as difficulty.

Can you enter both?

Nothing in either contest’s published rules that we reviewed prevents it. They use different accounts, markets and brokers, so a trader would need separate funded accounts for each.

Sources

• World Cup results and rules: the organiser’s historical standings and 2026 entry agreements, as compiled on our World Cup hub.
• U.S. Investing results, fees and field sizes: the organiser’s year-end releases and 2026 sign-up page, as compiled on our U.S. Investing Championship hub.
• Regulatory: CFTC Release 4791-03 (2003); SEC Release 33-7560 (1998) and Zadeh’s FINRA BrokerCheck report.

Continue Learning

• The World Cup Trading Championships – every champion since 1984.
• The U.S. Investing Championship – every modern result and the original era reconstructed.
• Larry Williams: The 11,376% Record
• Mark Minervini – the 2021 U.S. Investing champion.
• Marty Schwartz – the 1984 U.S. Investing champion so often misfiled as a World Cup winner.

Keep Reading

The Complete Trader's Edge The full Mind · Method · Money framework. 70 chapters. View on Amazon → Market Mayhem 400 years of bubbles, crashes, and the pattern that keeps repeating. Buy on Amazon → Greatest Companies How the world's greatest companies were built — and what traders learn from them. View on Amazon → Greatest Traders Eighty-six lives that explain the markets — Livermore to Madoff, told with the losses left in. View on Amazon →

Written by

Louw van Riet

Author · Trader · Coach

Louw is the author of The Complete Trader's Edge — a 70-chapter trading framework covering psychology, technical analysis, ICT concepts, and professional risk management. He has spent years studying institutional price action across forex, indices, and crypto, and built this platform to provide the complete, honest trading education he wished existed when he started.

About Louw → Follow on X → The Book →