Paul Skarp: 2015 Trading World Champion
Published January 11, 2016Paul Skarp won the 2015 World Trading Championships futures division with an audited return of 219.1%, the highest verified trading result of the year in any major global competition. In a market that gave almost nothing to directional traders — the S&P 500 returned just 1.4% and the average hedge fund gained barely 2% — Skarp more than tripled his capital through pure futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He was the last American to win the World Trading Championship futures division before Kevin McCormick reclaimed the title for the United States six years later in 2021. That makes the 2015 result a historical bookend in the competition's ongoing narrative.
2015 was one of the most punishing years for professional traders in recent memory. Markets went essentially nowhere on a net basis, but the path was anything but calm. China's surprise devaluation of the yuan in August triggered the worst global selloff since the 2011 European debt crisis, with the S&P 500 losing 11% in a matter of days. Oil continued its relentless collapse, falling below $40 and devastating energy-related portfolios. The Federal Reserve spent the entire year telegraphing its first rate hike in nearly a decade, finally delivering it in December — a move that had already been priced in by the time it happened. The hedge fund industry had its worst year since 2011, and numerous high-profile managers posted double-digit losses. In this environment, producing any meaningful positive return was difficult. Producing 219.1% was exceptional.
Skarp traded futures contracts across multiple asset classes, with his best results appearing to come from equity index and commodity futures during periods of heightened volatility. The August selloff would have been the defining test of the 2015 competition year — a violent, fast-moving drawdown that wiped out many traders in days. The ability to not only survive that event but profit from it, while maintaining a positive trajectory through the rest of a directionless year, speaks to a combination of timing, risk management, and the willingness to be aggressive when conditions favored it. Many competition traders produce strong first-half results and then give it all back during a single adverse event. Skarp held onto his gains through the worst volatility of the year.
The World Trading Championship, administered by Robbins Trading Company since 1984, requires all participants to trade real money through registered US brokers with full third-party auditing. Every entry, every exit, every position size is recorded and verified. This is what separates World Trading Championship results from the unaudited claims that fill social media and trading forums. When Skarp's 219.1% is reported, it is not an estimate or a self-reported number. It is a verified fact, documented through the same regulatory infrastructure that governs professional futures trading in the United States.
Skarp's approach to the futures markets appears to be primarily discretionary, with a focus on identifying high-probability directional setups and sizing positions aggressively during periods of conviction. This is the classic profile of a competition trader: the willingness to take concentrated risk when the edge is perceived to be large, accepting meaningful drawdowns as the cost of pursuing outsized returns. It is fundamentally different from the approach of an institutional fund manager who must manage client drawdowns and career risk. Competition trading is a purer test of a trader's ability to identify and exploit short-term opportunities, and Skarp excelled at it in 2015.
Skarp finished well ahead of a competitive field that included Jan Smolen of Slovakia at 170.3%, Artur Teregulov of Russia at 64.7%, and Allen Swiontek of the United States at 44.3%. The gap between first and second was nearly 49 percentage points, indicating that Skarp's result was not the product of a single lucky trade on the final day but rather a sustained campaign of outperformance throughout the year. Smolen, who would have won in many other World Trading Championship years, was a worthy runner-up. Teregulov, who placed third in 2015 with a comparatively modest 64.7%, would go on to win the 2016 World Trading Championship with a historic 914.8% return — a reminder that the competition field is deep and that one year's results don't define a trader's ceiling.
Skarp's long-term significance in the World Trading Championship would become clear a decade later when he returned to win the 2025 futures title with a 256% audited return, making him one of the rare traders to win the competition in two different decades. That consistency — performing at a championship level in both 2015 and 2025, across entirely different market regimes — suggests an edge that is durable rather than situational. But in January 2016, all that was known was the 2015 result: 219.1%, audited, in real money, in a year that broke most traders. In a year that gave the world almost nothing, Paul Skarp took more than anyone else. That is why he is the 2015 Trading World Champion.
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Based on publicly available information as of Jan 2016. About our process.