Running a competition with friends

The competitions feature lets you set up a tracked head-to-head across any group. Useful for trading clubs, study groups, or just friendly bets. Here is how it works.

Creating a competition

Go to /app/competitions and click Create. You set:

Name and description - shown to participants and on the standings page.
Start and end times - the window during which trades count. Standings reset when the start time hits.
Starting balance - everyone gets the same simulated capital at the start of the competition.
Visibility - public (listed in the directory) or unlisted (only people with the link can find it).

The competition is created in scheduled status. The worker process flips it to active at the start time and to ended at the end time, automatically.

Inviting participants

Share the competition URL. Anyone who clicks it gets the option to join. They keep their normal Hex37 account; the competition just adds a separate balance and a separate standings entry.

If you want a closed competition, leave it unlisted and only share the link in your group.

How standings work

The standings page on each competition is computed live from participants' realized + unrealized PnL within the competition's balance. It is not stored as a snapshot; the service computes it on demand.

What this means in practice:

Standings update in real time as positions move.
Funding payments and fees are reflected in PnL.
Open positions count at mark price for unrealized PnL, same as anywhere else on the platform.

What competitions reward (and don't)

Be aware of the dynamics:

Short competitions (a week or less) reward variance. The winner often took the largest leveraged position and got lucky.
Long competitions (a month or more) reward discipline. Variance averages out; consistent positive expectancy emerges.
Standings PnL does not weight by risk. A trader who 100xed their balance with one trade ranks above a trader who steadily compounded with 1% risk. This is a known property; for skill-comparison, longer windows are better.

For a trading club where the goal is learning, prefer 30-day or 90-day competitions. For a quick contest, a week is fine but accept that the result is partly luck.

Practical setup ideas

Monthly leaderboard. Ongoing 30-day competition, new one every month. Good for building a regular habit in a study group.
News-event challenge. 48-hour competition around a major event (FOMC, ETF decision, halving). Tests how participants handle volatility, not long-run edge.
Strategy bake-off. Each participant declares their strategy in writing at the start. At the end, you compare results to the declared plans, not just to each other.

Coming back to it

Ended competitions stay accessible at their URL. The standings page becomes a permanent record. Use the ?view=ended tab on the competitions index to find old ones.