2015 Trading World Champion Rankings

Paul Skarp won the 2015 World Trading Championships futures division with an audited return of 219.1%, the best verified trading result of the year in any major competition. In a year where the S&P 500 gained just 1.4% and the average hedge fund barely broke even, Skarp more than tripled his capital through pure futures trading — with every position tracked and audited by a third-party broker. He was the last American to win the World Trading Championship futures title before Kevin McCormick reclaimed it for the US in 2021, making the 2015 result a significant marker in competition history.

Skarp competed against a strong international field that included Jan Smolen of Slovakia (170.3%), Artur Teregulov of Russia (64.7%), and Allen Swiontek of the US (44.3%). The margin between first and second — roughly 49 percentage points — was decisive but not insurmountable, indicating that 2015 was a competitive year at the top of the leaderboard. Skarp's win demonstrated that even in a flat, choppy market, futures traders with the right skill set could extract outsized returns.

The World Trading Championship, administered by Robbins Trading Company since 1984, remains the gold standard for verified trading performance. All participants trade real money through registered US brokers with full auditing. In a year where unverified performance claims were rampant across social media and marketing, Skarp's 219.1% was documented and real.

Skarp would go on to build one of the more remarkable long-term World Trading Championship careers in competition history, returning to win the futures title a decade later in 2025 with a 256% audited return. That kind of consistency across a 10-year span, in a competition that attracts serious traders from around the world, speaks to a durable edge that transcends any single year or market condition. Full article »

Joseph Edelman's Perceptive Life Sciences Fund returned approximately 52% in 2015, making it one of the best-performing hedge funds of any size or strategy that year. In a market where the S&P 500 was essentially flat and the average hedge fund gained barely 2%, Edelman's result was extraordinary. The fund focused on life sciences and biotech equities — a sector that outperformed the broader market through most of 2015 before a sharp late-year correction triggered by drug pricing controversies. Edelman's ability to navigate that volatility while still delivering 52% demonstrated deep sector expertise and disciplined portfolio management.

Edelman founded Perceptive Advisors and built it into one of the most respected healthcare-focused hedge funds in the industry, managing approximately $1.5 billion by 2015. His 52% return earned him an estimated $300 million in personal income for the year and placed him among the top-ranked managers on Bloomberg's hedge fund performance lists. In a year that humbled most generalist fund managers, Edelman proved that sector specialists with genuine informational edges could still produce results that looked like they belonged in a different decade.

Nick Ridley won the 2015 World Trading Championships forex division with an audited return of 44.5%, the top verified forex result of the year. Based in the United Kingdom, Ridley traded major and minor currency pairs through the full calendar year in a forex market defined by central bank divergence — the Fed was moving toward its first rate hike while the ECB expanded quantitative easing, and China's surprise yuan devaluation in August sent shockwaves through the currency markets. Navigating those cross-currents required both technical precision and macro awareness.

The World Trading Championship forex division, like the futures division, requires real-money accounts with full broker auditing, ensuring that returns are verified and not inflated. Ridley's 44.5% may look modest next to the triple-digit returns in the futures division, but forex competition trading involves different risk parameters and position-sizing constraints. A 44.5% audited return in currencies, over a full calendar year, against a competitive international field, is a strong result by any standard. Ridley would remain a presence in the World Trading Championship forex division in subsequent years, competing at a high level across multiple campaigns.

Ken Griffin's Citadel delivered strong results in 2015, with the flagship Wellington fund up approximately 14% through the first half of the year according to people familiar with the fund's performance. In a market that produced near-zero returns for most investors and punished directional bets, Citadel's multi-strategy approach excelled by capturing alpha across equities, fixed income, commodities, and quantitative strategies simultaneously. By mid-2015, Citadel had surpassed $25.5 billion in assets under management, having fully recovered from its 2008 drawdown and then some.

Griffin's ranking at #4 reflects the difficulty of what Citadel accomplished in 2015 relative to the environment. When the August selloff triggered by China's yuan devaluation hit markets, most multi-strategy funds suffered significant drawdowns. Citadel's risk management framework — which imposes strict correlation limits between its semi-autonomous trading books — proved its value by containing losses during the volatility spike while maintaining the ability to profit from the dislocation. In a year that exposed the fragility of many hedge fund models, Citadel demonstrated why it was emerging as the dominant multi-strategy platform in the industry.

Jan Smolen of Slovakia finished second in the 2015 World Trading Championships futures division with an audited return of 170.3%, a result that in many other years would have been good enough to win. Smolen's performance was particularly notable given that he was competing from central Europe — a region not traditionally associated with World Trading Championship success — and produced a result that would rank as the winning return in a majority of World Trading Championship competition years. The 170.3% figure, fully audited through a US-regulated broker, underscored the growing internationalization of elite-level futures trading.

Smolen's inclusion at #5 reflects this site's emphasis on verified, audited trading results. In a year where the hedge fund industry averaged barely 2% and most professional traders struggled to find direction in a flat, choppy market, producing 170.3% through pure futures trading was an achievement that deserved recognition regardless of whether it landed first place or second. The World Trading Championship continues to surface traders from outside the traditional financial centers who are capable of world-class performance, and Smolen's 2015 result was a prime example.