2024 United States Investing Championship Final Results

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 27, 2025--

The United States Investing Championship just announced its final results for 2024. There were four hundred fifty-one competitors, each of whom selected a real money account to be tracked before the competition began. Prior top performers include Paul Tudor Jones, Mark Minervini, David Ryan, Mark Strome, and Dr. Edward O. Thorp.

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In the $1,000,000+ stock division, setting a new record of + 353.9%, is J Law, from Hong Kong. Mr. Law broke Mark Minervini’s prior record of + 334.8%. Mr. Law is a student of Mr. Minervini. He has a YouTube channel, @jlawstock. In second place + 273.8% is J Law’s wife, Judy Lai. In third place + 153.2% is Deepak Uppal, from Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Uppal has an MBA from the University of Illinois. Other traders reporting significant profits are Aryan Khandelwal (TwoXCapital) + 123.5%, John Ward (Mystic Valley Investments) + 122.8%, Theo Gustincic + 107%, Anthony Shi + 101.2%, George Tkaczuk + 97.7%, Vibha Jha + 78.2%, Louis Carlos Tarin + 64.2%, Bhasker J. Patel MD, FACC + 43.7%, James R. Wombles, Jr. + 35.1%, and D I Trading + 32.1%.

In the $1,000,000+ enhanced growth division, which allows the trading of futures and options, the winner is Brandi Archer + 90.7%, a full-time trader from Chicago. Ms. Archer previously worked in real estate and has a law degree from Chicago-Kent. Finishing second is Matthew Pryzby + 59.1%, from Long Beach, California. Mr. Pryzby runs Trading Experts, an educational service for traders. Other traders reporting significant profits are Warren Straub + 39.6%, Magnus Sigurdsson + 37.8%, and SK Chong of Kamet Capital Partners + 28.6%.

Among participants trading less than $1,000,000 in stocks, the winner is Judy Lai + 449.1%, the wife of J Law. Finishing second + 433.5% is Christian Flanders, from Puerto Rico. Mr Flanders played poker professionally for ten years and is a fencing champion. Finishing third + 409.6% is Leos Mikulka, from Prague, Czech Republic. Mr. Mikulka played professional football for the Czech Republic national team. He currently works in the IT industry. Other traders achieving gains of more than 100% are J Law + 397%, Mohamed Gad +308.8%, Martin Luk + 283.1%, Menelaos Fthenakis + 254%, Gabriel Blanco, CPA + 218.7%, Abinesh V. + 217.3%, Kelvin C.H. Wong + 180.6%, Javi Medina + 178.5%, Waddington J. G. Antonio + 138.9%, Steven Chase + 133.2%, Michael Seidler + 117.4%, Parin Vasava of Aartha Investments + 116.7%, and Matthew Moorman + 109.5%.

Among participants trading less than $1,000,000 in the enhanced growth division, the winner is Brandon Frenchak + 482.6%, from Montgomery, Texas. Mr. Frenchak owns a data engineering consulting firm. Second is Anindo Majumdar + 389.3%, from San Diego. Mr. Anindo Majumdar quit his job as an engineer at Cisco Systems in 2006 and has been a full-time trader ever since. Third is Florian Philippi + 311% from Germany, now living in New York City. Mr. Philippi is a Data Engineer. Other traders with gains of more than 100% are Andrew O’Connell, CFA, FRM (Pristine Capital) + 254%, Dave Gagne + 217.6%, David Tarin + 217%, Satish Karanam + 201.1%, Christopher Boyd + 200.8%, Tim Emanuel + 192.2%, Holly Handy + 191.9%, Lai Lee + 163.9%, Bhushan Bhangale + 117.4% and Andrew Preston of Mark Anthony Trading + 105.9%.

Since its inception in 1983, the United States Investing Championship has attracted legendary traders, including Paul Tudor Jones, Mark Minervini, David Ryan, Sean Ryan, Louis Bacon, Dr. Edward O. Thorp, Mark Strome, Doug Kass, Sheen Kassouf, Marty Schwartz, Frankie Joe, Tom Basso, Cedd Moses, Gil Blake, Robert Prechter, Jr., and Bruno Combier.

The standings appear on financial-competitions.com along with articles about top performers from Business Insider, Institutional Investor, Barron's, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and other financial publications. The standings also appear on X at @USICOfficial.

Entries for the 2025 competition are currently being accepted at financial-competitions.com. Participants who enter late are tracked from the close on the day they enter.

The contest coordinator, Dr. Norman Zadeh (aka Zada), is also president of the Lotfi Zadeh Foundation, a charity created to build thousands of ultra-low-cost ($5,000/unit) residences in sparsely populated areas and fully take care of the homeless. (Visit lotfi-zadeh.com for more information.) Dr. Zadeh taught Operations Research in a visiting capacity at Stanford, UCLA, UC Irvine, and Columbia Universities between 1975 and 1983. He managed hedge funds from 1991 to 2012. His father, Lotfi Zadeh, created fuzzy logic. Norm is the author of four books: Fox News: The Enemy Within (released in 2021), The Rise and Fall of Perfect 10 (released in 2021), Hold'em Poker Super Strategy (released in 2020), and Winning Poker Systems (Prentice Hall, 1974).

For more information, contact Dr. Norman Zadeh at normanz@earthlink.net or call 310-409-7193.

Leaders in $1 Million+ Division (Graphic: Business Wire)

The discount grocery chain Aldi is expanding rapidly and plans to open more than 180 U.S. stores this year as more Americans skip nights out at restaurants and cook at home due to anxiety over the nation's economy.

The chain, with U.S. operations based outside of Chicago, went on an expansion tear soon after inflation began to spike in 2021 and opened a record number of new stores last year.

Food inflation has slowed, but it was still up 2.4% last year, according to U.S. data, and has soared about 25% since the pandemic. On Tuesday, the U.S. Labor Department said that grocery prices jumped 0.7% in December from the previous month, and that price hikes accelerated faster in 2025 than they had in the previous two years.

Last month beef and veal prices climbed 1% from November, and are up 16.4% from last year. Coffee prices increased 1.9% in a month and are up almost 20% over a year. Egg prices dropped 8.2% in December, continuing to fall after surging last year after a bird flu outbreak.

Trump's message on inflation during his presidential campaign and his promises to lower prices immediately if elected have rankled some Americans who feel it is not a priority for the administration after all.

The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries and electricity in recent months, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Aldi has sought to snap up market share as more families trade down, meaning they are changing where they shop to cut costs.

Americans are dropping trusted name brands for cheaper store-brands and swapping out the places they've shopped for years in favor of discount or thrift stores. It's been a boon for national bargain stores chains like Dollar General and Dollar Tree.

That shift had begun before President Donald Trump’s trade war began, but appears to have accelerated over the past year.

Aldi said in 2024 that it planned to open 800 new stores by 2028 as inflation worries spread. It announced plans to open a record 225 locations last year in the U.S.

Aldi said Tuesday that it will add new distribution centers in Florida, Arizona, and Colorado and is still committed to investing $9 billion in the U.S. through 2028. The company is also looking to open more than 50 stores in Colorado within the next five years and plans to double its Las Vegas store count by 2030.

The expansion will give Aldi almost 2,800 stores by the end of the year, which gets its closer to its goal of 3,200 stores by 2028.

Traditional grocers are under pressure from bargain chains, massive retailers like Walmart, and also relatively new players like Amazon.com. In December, Amazon said same-day perishable grocery delivery had been expanded to more than 2,300 cities and towns, and the online giant said it has more expansion plans for this year.

FILE - An Aldi's Food Market in Salem, N.H on June 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)