2021 United States Investing Championship Six Month Results

By: United States Investing Championship via Business Wire

July 22, 2021 at 07:41 AM EDT

The United States Investing Championship today reported the leaders for the first six months of the 2021 competition, which involved 334 top traders from around the world. The United States Investing Championship is a real money verified competition which gives up and coming traders an opportunity to showcase their talent on the world stage. Prior top performers include Paul Tudor Jones and Louis Bacon. Participants specify an account number at the beginning of the year for tracking purposes. 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.

The leader in the $1,000,000+ stock division after six months is Mark Minervini, + 223.4%. Mr. Minervini is the author of two best-selling trading books, Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard and Think & Trade Like a Champion. He also finished first in the United States Investing Championship in 1997. In second, + 35.8%, is Vibja Jha. Miss Jha was the top performing female in the 2020 competition, finishing + 155.2% in stocks in the under $1,000,000 division. In third, + 18.6%, is Vivek Subramanyam, from London. Mr. Subramanyam is founder and CEO of a technology focused investment bank, Technology Holdings. Mr. Subramanyam was born in India, studied business management there, and then spent a decade each in New York and London. In 2020, he finished first, + 60.6%, in the $1,000,000+ enhanced growth division, which allows futures and options trading. In fourth in the 2021 competition, + 13.2%, is Irena Friedgan. Ms. Friedgan manages the Hubrix Fund II.

The leader in the $1,000,000+ enhanced growth division after six months is Arthur Smelyanski of Maccabi Capital Management, + 9.3%, followed by Ravi Reddy, + 2%.

Leading after six months in the under $1,000,000 stock division is Dmitry A. Koshuba of Trade2Double, + 475.5%. Mr. Koshuba was born in the Ukraine and immigrated to the United States in 1992. He has worked as a builder and commercial real estate developer and splits his time between Germany and Chile. In second place, + 287.1%, is Ryan Pierpont, from Los Gatos, California. Mr. Pierpont graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in business. He currently does financial planning for the enterprise software industry. He finished third in the 2020 competition, + 448.4%. In third place is Miguel Zambrano from Peru, + 259.1%. Other top performers in the stock division after six months include Sundeep Idlani, + 76.8%; Gordon Faux, + 72.4%; Taylor Kendall, + 69.4%; Ryan Gibson, + 67.9%; and Sean Ryan, + 67%. Sean is the son of three time United States Investing Champion David Ryan and finished + 128% in the 2020 competition, and + 51.8% in the 2019 competition.

Among participants in the enhanced growth division trading accounts of less than $1,000,000, the leader after three months is Levan Seperteladze, + 93.5%. Mr. Seperteladze grew up in Tbilisi, Georgia, which was part of the former Soviet Union. He then moved to North Carolina, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, and a Master’s degree in International Management from High Point University. He has been trading since 2008. Second, + 90.2%, is Salvador Palma, from Chile. Mr. Palma has traded for many years and was previously an analyst for Moneda Asset Management and MBI. In third place, + 89.3%, is Steve Geng. Mr. Geng grew up in North Caldwell, New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers in 1987 with a degree in Economics. He was a broker for ten years and now works in cyber security software sales. Other top performers after six months include Nick Marino, + 75.8%; Yeow Yong Teh, + 62.1%, Kumar and Nandan Dhanesh, + 61.2%; and ZI Capital, + 60.4%.

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 allows traders to enter the competition and provides copies of past articles about top performers which appeared in Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and other financial publications. 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 professor of Operations Research who taught in a visiting capacity at Stanford, UCLA, UC Irvine and Columbia universities between 1975 and 1983. Dr. Zadeh managed hedge funds from 1991 to 2012. From 1996 to 2017, he was president of Perfect 10, Inc., which published Perfect 10 magazine from 1996 to 2007. A former professional gambler, Dr. Zadeh is the son of Lotfi Zadeh, the creator of fuzzy logic. Norman Zadeh is the author of three books, Hold’em Poker Super Strategy, Winning Poker Systems, and the soon to be released, The Rise and Fall of Perfect 10.