>Overall Top 10

superdbeck
arielle
zoomhut
xliu
ssluu
ckeddy
k1
qy25
iburn
greywolf

Week Trader P/L
1 qy25 $106350.00
2 arielle $847957.60
3 seekalpha $2670022.00
4 xliu $4405693.00
5 haichen $3403293.00
6 Acionista $4306559.00
7 superdbeck $5374656.00
8 mzheng $4300176.00
9 YufeiWang $6525866.00

US Grand Prize winner
superdbeck $20769630.00

arielle (me) $20315330.00

I will come back next year! (bullet eyessssssss* O___O*bullet eyessssssss)

and god, i won’t miss any more trading sessions , be it early in the season – during the last two weeks or on the last 2 days. >________________________<
AJA AJA Fighting! You guys too! Have a good break~~

This 2 month blog is now closed. (Might be reopened next year )

*Bonus:

Average $8,410

Average P&L Value: 8409.554

Total Number of Trades: 77736

Total Number of Traders: 2508 (double last yr! why dont they double up the prizes too? like runner up 1, runner up 2? this reminds me of Little Miss Sunshine famous quote: “Life is one f…. beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work…” lolz

Your Rank : overall: 2; in your class: 1; in your university: 1

*the last week is intensely competitive. i kept the 1st place for the first 2 days, then was replaced by superdbeck. [Thursday night] Given that I just missed 1 trading session (~1/2 mi), thus locking myself in the old positions, the chance of getting a ticket to HK/London is growing dimmer than ever for me.

*however tempting my desire to shoot myself is, i need to learn and move on.

*again, 9 weeks of efforts might be wasted at the last minute. expect the unexpected.

*hope you guys all had fun playing FantasyFutures , which is much different from managing a stock/option portfolio.

1. Do the Friday 6-7 -> more accurate the weekly rank is. 1/5 of my last wk balance is counted towards this week.

2. Take loss and make up now -> better than clear out with flat loss at the end.

so you will probably see me slide down this week.

end of week 7: $15,406,400

Some changes so far:

.The prices are not updated on Fri night or Sun night although trading is open.

.Total number of undergrads, MBAs, Masters and phDs till now: 2016!

Complacency is indeed the biggest sin

Top 10 overall

seekalpha
ckeddy
zoomhut
siam
k1
superdbeck
ssmadsen80
Alida
xliu
arielle

Average $5,835

Based from my observations, in order to be in the top 10, one needs to have a balance worth  ~1000 times as much as the average.

Anyways, congrats to all who are in top 20. We are beating around 2000~ Keep up the good work!

I hate simulated EUR r with a passion

update: temporarily closed for midterms.

seekalpha
ssmadsen80
moneymaker831
LochLomond
Alida
mezzomix
iburn
ckeddy
zoomhut
arielle

bloody lesson: Exit early with little loss is better.

LochLomond
seekalpha
ssmadsen80
mezzomix
ckeddy
arielle
siam
Alida
k1
vgnatyuk

SIV Shock, Inflation Make U.S. Treasury Notes Unbeatable Bonds
By Daniel Kruger and Liz Capo McCormick

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) — The combination of record U.S. home foreclosures, rising defaults and simmering inflation is making two-year Treasury notes and their equivalents unbeatable in the bond market.

Anxiety over the $300 billion owed by structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, is pushing investors into the relative safety of two-year notes sold by the government and the most creditworthy companies at the same time that rising consumer prices reduce the appeal of 10-year securities. The gap in yields between the bonds is getting wider, reminiscent of 2001, when the Federal Reserve began cutting its target interest rate for overnight loans between banks.

Barclays Capital Inc., UBS Securities LLC and strategists at other firms that trade directly with the central bank said the yield curve represented by the gap between yields on two-and 10- year government notes will steepen as the economy slows and forces policy makers to cut borrowing costs a second time this year. UBS says the spread may widen to 2.50 percentage points from the current 0.61 percentage point within two years.

“Across 2008, sustained steepening of the yield curve will be a consistent theme,” said Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of fixed- income strategy in New York at Barclays, one of the 21 primary government securities dealers.

Buying two-year notes has been the best strategy for investors since yields reached their lows of the year on Sept. 10. Government debt maturing in 2009 returned 0.47 percent over that time, versus a loss of 0.16 percent for 10-year Treasuries, according to data compiled by Merrill Lynch & Co.

GE, Fannie Mae

About the only fixed-income investments that have performed better are shorter-maturity securities sold by companies with the least chance of defaulting and government-sponsored agencies, according to the Merrill data. While tracking Treasuries, they also offer higher yields.

Corporate bonds with top AAA credit ratings due in one to three years have returned 0.67 percent since Sept. 10, Merrill data show. Fairfield Connecticut-based General Electric Co.’s $250 million of 8.3 percent notes due in 2009 have gained 0.52 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The so-called agency bonds of mortgage finance providers Fannie Mae in Washington and Freddie Mac of McLean, Virginia, have also returned 0.52 percent.

Investors seeking safety piled into short-term securities last week after Rhinebridge Plc, the SIV run by Dusseldorf, Germany-based IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, said it may not be able to repay all its debt, and receivers said a fund run by London-based Cheyne Capital Management Ltd. will stop paying creditors. SIVs borrow in short-term debt markets to finance purchases of longer-maturity assets.

Tumbling Yields

The yield on the benchmark two-year note tumbled the most since September 2001 last week, by 45 basis points to 3.78 percent. The 10-year yield dropped 29 basis points to 4.39 percent. As recently as June, the yields were even at about 5 percent. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.

There is a “sentiment game” that is causing yields to diverge, said Jamie Jackson, who oversees government debt trading at RiverSource Investments in Minneapolis, which manages $100 billion of bonds. “People are frightened. They’re pricing in a higher probability of Fed rate cuts and that’s rallying the front end of the curve.”

Mortgages entering foreclosure increased to 0.65 percent in the second quarter, the highest recorded in the 35 years the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington has tracked the data. U.S. builders broke ground at an annual rate of 1.191 million homes in September, the lowest in 14 years, the Commerce Department said last week. The same day, the government said consumer prices rose 2.8 percent last month from a year earlier, matching the biggest increase of 2007.

Derivatives

Nowhere is the outlook for a steeper yield curve more evident than in the derivatives market.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp.’s securities unit, Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group and UBS say a steeper curve will increase swings in longer-term Treasury yields. More volatility makes the securities less appealing because it increases the risk an investor buying the debt will lose money.

“We will see a pick-up in volatility in 10-year rates as the Fed eases,” said Eric Liverance, head of derivatives strategy at UBS in Stamford, Connecticut.

Bank of America, Credit Suisse and UBS recommend wagering that the yield gap will widen with derivatives such as options on interest-rate swaps, which are agreements to exchange fixed-rate payments for ones based on floating rates. Options on swaps, known as swaptions, provide a hedge against swings in rates. Options give the buyer the right, not the obligation, to buy or sell a security at a set price in the future.

`Hand-in-Hand’

“The shape of the yield curve and swaption volatility go hand-in-hand as they are both measures of risk premium,” Liverance said.

Volatility on one-year options for 10-year swaps rose to 88.5 basis points on Oct. 19 from 64.45 basis points on June 6, the lowest since Bloomberg began gathering the data in May 2005. The figure represents traders’ expectations for swings in swap rates over the next year.

UBS data show that volatility on the swaptions climbed almost 50 percent in 2001, when the Fed reduced its target rate from 6.5 percent at the start of January to 1.75 percent in December. The spread between two- and 10-year Treasury yields widened to 2.13 percentage points in December. There was no difference in the yields in January.

Two-year notes returned 7.9 percent in 2001, including reinvested interest, the most since 1995, according to index data from New York-based Merrill Lynch, another primary dealer. Ten- year Treasuries handed investors 4.3 percent that year.

Fed Outlook

Options on federal fund futures traded on the Chicago Board of Trade show traders see a 92 percent chance the central bank will reduce its target a quarter-percentage point to 4.5 percent when it meets on Oct. 31, and a 74 percent probability of another cut to 4.25 percent in December. The Fed lowered the rate a half- point to 4.75 percent last month, its first reduction since 2003, and said “some inflation risks remain.”

The economy isn’t slowing enough for the Fed to cut its target below 4.5 percent, said Michael Cloherty, an interest-rate strategist at Bank of America in New York. “This is not going to be like 2001,” and the difference between two- and 10-year yields may peak at 0.7 percentage point next month, he said.

Back then, the economy expanded 0.8 percent. Next year, growth will likely be about 1.9 percent, the International Monetary Fund said Oct. 17.

Longer-maturity debt typically yields more than shorter- dated securities because investors demand a bigger premium to lend for a longer period. Ten-year yields have exceeded two-year yields 80 percent of the time over the past decade, Bloomberg data show.

Inverted Curve

Between June 2006 and May 2007, the curve was inverted 82 percent of the time after the Fed lifted rates at 17 straight meetings in two years.

Investors watch the relationship between short- and long- term yields because the economy has gone into recession six of the seven times since 1960 that the relationship inverted.

Measures of investor attitudes about the outlook for credit suggest that demand for the safest of government debt will continue.

It costs banks 1.33 percentage points more to borrow for three months than the U.S. government pays. The difference averaged less than 0.4 percentage point in the first half of the year before losses on securities tied to subprime mortgages spread and caused investors to flee high-risk assets.

Shorter-maturity debt will continue to benefit because of “significant demand from those who think the housing market will lead to broader weakness in the economy,” said Barclays’s Rajadhyaksha. At the same time, 10-year notes will fare worse because “the Fed will be seen as being somewhat behind the curve on inflation,” he said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Kruger in New York at dkruger1@bloomberg.net ; Liz Capo McCormick in New York at Emccormick7@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 21, 2007 12:00 EDT

as expected, surprise!

(well, i am by no means surprised by my own performance =__=)
LochLomond
ssmadsen80
ckeddy
seekalpha
arielle
Alida
mezzomix (oo, he’s back)
siam
qy25
zoomhut

just out of mere curiosity, i am 100% positive the LochLomond is also a junior in college like me (but not from the same school) you can come to this conclusion by checking the rank in fb

Total Number of Traders: 1471

Market Activity

Average P&L Value: 1146.22

Number of Trades Today: 1669

Number of Trades This Week: 7102

Total Number of Trades: 15227

[Last year there were only 11xx traders.]

[The winner Ming Fan said he would join the game again]

The stakes are high.

LochLomond
arielle
ssmadsen80
ckeddy
qy25
siam
akumar425
Alida
seekalpha
Nealious

mid day 4, week 3. really volatile EUR will send some surprising results.

bad day for me >_<