Participants would be required to participate individually or in teams of two. A virtual trading platform “Investopedia” will be used where every team must create their own account and join a premade game labelled “The Trader-Kontigence ''. Over the three trading sessions, the team that has the maximum portfolio value will be the winner. We encourage the participants to try the platform and familiarize themselves before the event. This can be done by randomly joining any external competition on Investopedia. A starting amount of $1,000,000 will be given to all participants.

Note:  For this competition we will be using the US Stock Market Exchange (NYSE & NASDAQ) which opens at different times for all timezones.

• This competition is focused on trading rather than investing.

  Trading focuses on short-term buying and selling, while investing involves buying and holding securities for an extended period of time. The time span for trading can be as little as a matter of seconds, uptil a couple of days or maybe a week while investing can range upto months and decades.

• Trading is a more aggressive approach in the stock market, and hence continuous monitoring of stocks is required. Having said that, it is recommended not to buy (or short) multiple stocks at once, as you may not be able to monitor all fluctuations and movements simultaneously.

• Although minute, there are brokerage charges (in this case Investopedia) that takes a small fee for any buy or sell action. Therefore, the more frequently you perform actions, more money will “leak” out of your portfolio value.

• Since this is a three day competition you may prefer to go “all out” rather than playing safe in hopes of higher returns. Generally, small caps stocks are riskier as they have a greater volatility, but this can be used to gain higher returns than medium or large cap stocks that have lower volatility. In financial terms, higher risks lead to higher returns. (Link)

• The winners will completely be decided by the final portfolio value calculated as the sum of the value of the current value of securities + unused cash.

• There are different “types of orders” available at your disposal while exiting a trade.

• A market order is a buy or sell order to be executed immediately at the current market prices. Market orders are used when certainty of execution is a priority over the price of execution. A market order is the simplest of the order types and gives the highest probability of your order being executed.

• A limit order is an order to buy or sell a stock at a specific price or better. A buy limit order can only be executed at the limit price or lower, and a sell limit order can only be executed at the limit price or higher. A limit order is not guaranteed to execute.

• A stop-loss order is an order to buy or sell a specific stock once the stock reaches a certain price. A stop-loss is designed to limit an investor's loss on a security position. For example, setting a stop-loss order for 10% below the price at which you bought the stock will limit your loss to 10%.

Now that you have understood the types of orders and what they do, the only logical question is why to use them. Regular trading hours for the U.S. stock market (NYSE and Nasdaq), are 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern Time. This means that the stock market is open for 6 hours and 30 minutes a day and of course it is not expected for everyone to sit and continuously monitor all stocks all day. Hence this saves your time, reduces your risk, and, most importantly, saves you money.