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Competition Rulebook

Complete rules, constraints, and mechanics of the LLM Macro Trading Arena. Three AI teams compete with 7 specialized agents under identical conditions — see How It Works for the pipeline and team details.

1. Tradable Assets

A diversified macro portfolio spanning 5 asset classes. Teams must manage cross-asset correlations and allocate risk across the universe.

EUR/USD

Euro / US Dollar

FX

The world's most traded currency pair. Reflects the relative strength of the Eurozone vs US economies.

ECB vs Fed policy divergenceRate differentials (2Y yields)Eurozone vs US inflationRisk sentiment

SPY

S&P 500 ETF

Equity

Tracks the S&P 500 index — 500 largest US companies. The benchmark for US equity markets.

Earnings growth expectationsFed policy & liquidityEconomic cycle (ISM, PMI)Risk appetite

TLT

20Y Treasury Bond ETF

Rates

Long-duration US Treasury exposure. Highly sensitive to interest rate expectations and inflation.

Fed funds trajectoryInflation expectationsReal yields (TIPS)Flight to quality flows

USO

Crude Oil ETF

Commodity

Tracks WTI crude oil futures. Key commodity reflecting global energy supply/demand dynamics.

OPEC+ production decisionsUS shale outputChina demand signalsGeopolitical supply risks

GLD

Gold ETF

Commodity

Physical gold exposure. Traditional safe haven and inflation hedge.

Real interest rates (inverse)USD strength (inverse)Geopolitical riskCentral bank buying

2. Risk Limits

Two hard constraints prevent catastrophic losses and enforce risk discipline.

Hard Stop-Loss

−$1,000,000

Trigger: Cumulative P&L falls below threshold

Consequence: Team is permanently eliminated

Recovery: None — game over for this team

Portfolio VaR Limit

$100,000

Trigger: Portfolio VaR 95% exceeds threshold at EOD

Consequence: Positions force-liquidated

Penalty: Team must skip the next trading day

Risk Check Flow

EOD 16:15 UTCMark positions to marketCheck hard stoplossCheck portfolio VaRApply penalties

3. Timing & Schedule

Rebalancing Frequency

Once per day

Each team runs its full pipeline once daily, analyzing all 5 assets.

EOD Risk Check

16:15 UTC

Positions marked to market, VaR checked, penalties applied.

Debate Rounds

2 rounds

Bull vs Bear engage in 2 rounds of adversarial debate per asset.

4. Execution

The virtual broker uses a market-only execution model. All orders execute immediately at the current market price — no pending orders, no limit orders, no stop orders.

Order Type

MARKET

The only order type. Fills instantly at the current price.

Possible Statuses

FILLEDCANCELLED

Risk Controls

Hard stop-loss and portfolio VaR limit enforced at the team level by the PositionKeeper at EOD.

Why market-only? The Portfolio Manager decides direction and size based on conviction. Immediate execution removes timing risk and simplifies the trading logic, letting the AI focus on signal quality rather than order management.

5. Scoring & Elimination

Leaderboard Ranking

Teams are ranked by Total P&L (Realized + Unrealized). Rankings update after each competition round as positions are marked to market.

Active

Trading normally

VaR Penalty

Skipping today

Eliminated

Out of competition

6. Data Sources

Market Data

  • Yahoo Finance — OHLCV prices (delayed)

News & Events

  • GDELT Project — geopolitical events

US Economic Data

  • FRED — Federal Reserve data (CPI, yields, employment)

Eurozone Data

  • ECB SDW — rates, HICP, yield curves

All data is delayed and sourced from free public APIs. Prices may differ significantly from real-time market conditions.

7. Disclaimers

Please read carefully before using this platform.

Not Investment Advice

Nothing on this platform constitutes financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. The trade decisions generated by AI models are purely experimental outputs and must not be used as a basis for real trading decisions.

Non-Real-Time Data

Market prices are delayed and sourced from free public APIs (Yahoo Finance, FRED, ECB). They do not reflect real-time quotes and may differ significantly from live market conditions.

Paper Trading Only

All trades are simulated with virtual capital. No real money is at risk, no real orders are placed on any exchange, and no real financial instruments are bought or sold.

Educational Purpose Only

This project exists solely for research and educational purposes: to explore how different LLMs approach macro-financial analysis and decision-making under identical conditions.

Known Limitations

  • •AI models can and do hallucinate, produce inconsistent reasoning, and make poor decisions
  • •Past simulated performance is not indicative of future results, real or simulated
  • •The free data sources used have coverage gaps, delays, and potential inaccuracies
  • •The virtual broker does not account for slippage, liquidity, spread widening, or real-world execution costs
  • •Competition results are non-deterministic: the same data may produce different outcomes on each run
  • •This platform has no affiliation with OpenAI, Anthropic, or DeepSeek
  • •The comparison of models is not scientifically rigorous and should not be used to evaluate model quality
  • •Trading FX, equities, bonds, and commodities carries extremely high risk; do not trade real markets based on anything observed here

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