Market History · Trading Championships
11,376%
Why Larry Williams’ 1987 record has never been beaten
Last reviewed: September 2026. Contest results come from the organiser’s official historical standings. The compounding figures are our own arithmetic, labelled as such.
Larry Williams’ 11,376% in the 1987 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading has survived thirty-eight later annual contests without being matched. The next-best winning year in the contest’s history is 1,283%, and it came two years earlier. No annual futures champion has passed 1,000% since 1997. The record stands because producing it requires two things that almost never happen together over twelve months: extreme position sizing, and surviving it.
That is the short version. The longer one is about arithmetic, survivorship and one trader’s decision to stop pressing.
How far ahead the record is
Here are the ten largest winning years in the annual futures contest since 1984.
| Rank | Year | Champion | Net return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1987 | Larry Williams | 11,376.0% |
| 2 | 1985 | Ralph Casazzone | 1,283.0% |
| 3 | 1997 | Michelle Williams | 1,001.0% |
| 4 | 2004 | Kurt Sakaeda | 929.1% |
| 5 | 2016 | Artur Teregulov | 914.8% |
| 6 | 2008 | Andrea Unger | 671.9% |
| 7 | 2002 | John Holsinger | 608.1% |
| 8 | 2000 | Kurt Sakaeda | 595.3% |
| 9 | 2024 | Brent Carlile | 532.3% |
| 10 | 2023 | Ivan Scherman | 491.4% |
Our arithmetic. The record is almost nine times the second-best year and about 45 times the median champion’s 251.8%. In most sports a record is broken by a small margin and then pushed forward. This one sits so far above the rest of the distribution that it behaves less like a benchmark and more like an outlier the contest has had to live with.
What 11,376% actually requires
An 11,376% return turns every dollar into $114.76. Spread evenly over twelve months, that is a compounded gain of about 48.5% every month, for a year. The median champion’s 251.8% needs about 11% a month.
No one trades like that in practice. Real equity curves are lumpy, with runs, flat stretches and drawdowns. The point of the monthly figure is to show the scale. To reach 11,376%, a trader has to be sized so that a good month can double the account, and a sized-to-double account can also be cut in half by a bad one.
The position size that can produce 11,376% is the same position size that usually produces a wiped-out account. The record is what it looks like when that sizing survives for twelve months.
The problem is survival, not skill
Every aggressive strategy has two outcomes: the curve compounds, or the account is destroyed. The more aggressively it is sized, the bigger the possible upside and the higher the probability of the second outcome. That trade-off is the risk-of-ruin arithmetic, and it is merciless at contest leverage.
The contest leaderboard only shows the first outcome. Accounts that were sized just as aggressively and blew up do not appear in the champions list. This is survivorship bias at its plainest. For every trader who compounded through a year at extreme size, some unknown number tried and failed, and the published record cannot tell you how many. The organiser does not publish field sizes or failure counts.
So the question “why has nobody beaten it?” has an uncomfortable partial answer: people may well have tried, and the attempts ended before they showed up anywhere.
Why Williams stopped at 11,376%
Williams has said he did not finish the year at full throttle. In our profile of him we cover his account of reducing risk once the title was secure, and a YouTube video published in October 2025 carries his account of how he almost ended the year at 20,000%. Taken at his word, the record understates what the strategy was doing at its peak and reflects a deliberate decision to stop pressing.
That decision is the most transferable part of the story. A contest rewards maximum return; it does not reward the trader for giving it back. Williams took his foot off the pedal when more return was available and the downside was still enormous. Many traders who run hot do the opposite and keep pressing until the market takes the gains back.
The dollar figure that gets misquoted
The result is usually described as Williams turning $10,000 into $1,137,600. The arithmetic does not quite work. An 11,376% return on $10,000 is a profit of $1,137,600, which would take the account to about $1,147,600, not $1,137,600. Either the dollar figure is the profit, or the percentage is calculated on a different base.
We cannot resolve this from the published record. The organiser’s standings give the percentage, not the account balance, and the contest measures return on total funds deposited, so any additional deposits during the year would also change the base. The percentage is the official figure. Treat the dollar amount as the profit on the published percentage rather than an audited ending balance.
What has come close, somewhere else
Bigger raw numbers do exist, but not in the same contest.
- Quarterly day trading, World Cup. David Trullas Vila made 2,222.6% in the second quarter of 2026, on a $2,500 minimum account over about 90 days.
- Global Cup futures. Sadanand Kalasabail made 1,138.1% from June 2022 to May 2023, the largest Global Cup print.
- U.S. Investing Championship. Tito Adhikary made +2,115.1% in the 2025 Enhanced Growth division.
Our arithmetic. Trullas Vila’s quarter turned each dollar into about $23. A trader who sustained a fraction of that pace for four quarters would pass Williams comfortably, which is exactly why nobody has: the pace that produces a record quarter is the pace that almost never survives a year. None of these results is a like-for-like challenge to the 1987 figure, because each ran on a different clock, account minimum or set of rules. The World Cup hub explains why a shorter contest does not mean a smaller number.
Could it be beaten?
Nothing in the current rules prevents it. The minimum account is still $10,000, futures still carry high leverage, and the contest still ranks on raw percentage. What it would take is a trader willing to run contest-level size for twelve months and markets that cooperate for long enough. Since 1997, no champion has cleared even a tenth of the record.
There is also a reason serious traders may not try. The prize is a trophy and press coverage. The cost of the attempt, sized to have a real chance, is a high probability of losing the whole account. The traders with the most skill are often the ones least willing to take that bet, which is roughly what Kevin Davey’s approach shows: he designed his systems to make about 100% a year, reach the podium, and survive.
Mind. The hardest decision in Williams’ year was not a trade. It was stopping. Knowing when the goal is met, and cutting risk while more upside is still on the table, is the skill most traders never practise.
Method. Williams was a trader with a well-developed toolkit long before 1987. The record came from applying that toolkit at extreme size, not from a new method that only worked for one year.
Money. The record is a sizing story. The same position size that can multiply an account a hundredfold will usually destroy it first. Know which side of that line your own sizing sits on.
What to take from the record
- Do not use it as a target. It is an outlier in a small-account, high-leverage, winner-only contest. The median champion made 251.8%.
- Read every big number with its survivors in mind. For every published champion there are unpublished accounts that tried the same thing and failed.
- Size for survival first. The risk-of-ruin arithmetic decides whether an aggressive curve compounds or collapses, long before skill does.
- Know when to stop. Williams’ decision to cut risk late in the year is as much a part of the record as the trades that built it.
Frequently asked questions
Has anyone beaten Larry Williams’ 11,376% record?
Not in the annual World Cup Championship of Futures Trading. It has stood through thirty-eight later annual contests. The closest winning year is Ralph Casazzone’s 1,283% in 1985.
How much money did Larry Williams make in 1987?
On the published return of 11,376% and a $10,000 starting account, the profit is $1,137,600. The figure is often quoted as the ending balance, but the arithmetic implies it is the profit.
What is the highest return ever in a trading championship?
Within the World Cup annual futures contest, Williams’ 11,376%. Shorter contests have printed large numbers over shorter periods, such as 2,222.6% in a 2026 quarterly event, and the U.S. Investing Championship’s record is +2,115.1% in 2025. These are not directly comparable because each contest has different rules and durations.
Why is the record so hard to beat?
Because the position size needed to reach it is also large enough to wipe an account out, and the contest only publishes the accounts that survived. Beating it would take extreme sizing and twelve months without the losing run that usually ends such attempts.
Did Larry Williams’ daughter beat his record?
No. Michelle Williams won the 1997 contest with 1,001%, the third-highest winning year in the contest’s history.
Sources
- Contest results: the organiser’s historical standings and current standings, checked 27 September 2026.
- Williams’ own account of the year: his published interviews, as covered in our Larry Williams profile, and the YouTube video “The Untold Story Behind Larry William’s 11,000%/Yr Gain” (October 2025).
- Other contest records: our World Cup and U.S. Investing Championship hubs.
Further reading
Record years and the traders who survived long after them 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
- Larry Williams: The 11,376% Record – the trader behind the number.
- The World Cup Trading Championships – every champion since 1984.
- Risk of Ruin: The Mathematics Every Trader Must Understand
- Position Sizing: The Most Important Decision in Every Trade
- How to Trade Futures
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