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CME "Trade Against a Pro" Trading Challenge - March 3-8
I did one of their trading competitions in Energy futures at the end of last year (Nov. 2018). (/CL, /RB, /BZ were allowed and you had a virtual account of $100,000.00). I thought it helped me learn a few things.
I didn't find any either, unfortunately this seems pretty typical.
Last time they emailed me before the challenge and I had to review some educational stuff before I was officially entered into the challenge. They were just videos and docs about how the West Texas Intermediate pipeline worked and likewise for Brent crude (since it was an energy futures challenge), though I don't remember if it was mandatory or suggested now that I think about it.
Maybe all cme-listed products are valid? Won't know for sure until more info comes out.
1) I don't have a sure answer for how they decide if you get filled (I haven't asked them). I do use their simulator for my current trading that I am journaling, as well as experiments outside of that when I want to test new strategies and I am getting partially-filled on orders for multiple contracts so I know they have some sort of queueing model to simulate a real order book and it does not always just fill if it hits your price though sometimes it does, which i think is cool and more realistic.
My "serious" sim-trading that I journal and track is usually just one contract orders but even then I have seen my price get hit and not filled a couple times this paat week.
2) They do not take commissions out, your P/L that is ranked is exactly what it would be before any fees. I track that separately and I use the following model:
/ES, /NQ
$1.25 per contract per side.
$1.18 Clearing fee per side
$0.02 NFA fee per side
$0.30 Transaction fee per side
= $5.50 round-trip per contract
/CL, /NG, /GC are almost the same except the clearing fee I bump to $1.50 per side so round-trip is about $6.14 per contract.
3) They limit your position to 10 contracts in any product, but you can open positions in multiple products. I want to say the margin reqs. are something like $7,480.00 per contract but I don't know if its actually enforced. I've never had a virtual margin-call.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,386
Thanks Received: 10,206
Thanks @snax. I was thinking about entering and trying to only trade butterflys. No-commissions would make this very doable, but the max 10 contracts would make it impossible. Many of the CL butterflys have an initial margin of only $100, so theoretically if you were leveraging a $100,000 account you could have a 1000. Obviously not good advice for real life!
I'm (roughly) guessing that CQG just models the order queue-depth based on current live market volume and simulates the partial-fills and slippage of the live market in the simulator.
