Tom Doub, Jimmy Li, and What Six Months Did to the 2026 US Investing Championship
The United States Investing Championship published its first-half 2026 standings on July 28. Two numbers reorganised the Stock Division, and one of them is a number that is no longer there.
I compete in this championship, so I read the audit line by line. Here is what the first six months actually showed.
The headline stat almost nobody quoted
688 competitors. Only 115 — 17% — are reporting a profit. The S&P 500 was up 10.2% over the same six months.
Read that again. Five out of six of the most aggressive, most competitive real-money traders in the world are behind an index fund, and most of them are behind zero. This is a market that punished conviction. Every profile below has to be read against that backdrop.
Tom Doub, Ph.D. (Arcadia Analytics) — +880.7%
Who he is. Dr. Tom Doub is Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Arcadia Analytics, based in the Nashville metropolitan area. He holds a PhD in Clinical and Quantitative Psychology and spent years as faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center before markets. He is on LinkedIn; Arcadia Analytics has no public website of record.
And here is the detail that reframes the whole result: by his own account, he transitioned to full-time algorithmic trading in 2026 — the same year he put up this number.
He does not appear in the 2025 final standings. On the public record, 2026 is his breakout audit.
The strategy, in his own words. This is not a discretionary stock-picker. Doub describes Arcadia Analytics as running systematic trading strategies grounded in quantitative and behavioral research — automated execution, strict risk controls, position-sizing protocols, and a diversified book of models across multiple timeframes, each backtested across market regimes and stress-tested before deployment. Business Wire's Q1 headline called him an AI-aided trader; his own framing is algorithmic.
The behavioural half is the interesting part. His stated thesis is that human judgment is systematically biased in predictable ways, so the defence is to design systems that remove emotional interference. Or as he puts it: trading isn't about predicting the future, it's about managing probabilities and risk. A psychometrician built a machine to trade around his own cognitive biases — and it is currently beating 687 other people.
What the numbers imply. Do the compounding: +190.5% to +880.7% means Q2 alone was roughly +238%. From the April 30 mark, May and June together were about +154%. The Stock Division permits stocks and ETFs only — no futures, no long options — so none of that came from derivative leverage. A systematic book producing +238% in a quarter is running significant concentration and turnover, whatever the execution method.
The honest caveat. A single-year print, however verified, is not a track record — and this is his first year full-time. Doub's audit is real and it is extraordinary. Whether the same models survive a market that doesn't offer a Q2 like this one is a question only 2027 and 2028 answer. Backtested across regimes is not the same as traded through them.
Tin Chun Jimmy Li — the Q1 leader who left the list
Who he is. A Hong Kong-based equities trader, public handle @tcjimmyli. His entire public bio is three lines: trading since 2018, macro then technical then fundamental, currently competing in the USIC 2026 20k division.
That is the whole footprint. No course, no newsletter, no YouTube channel, no interview. 639 followers and a cartoon avatar. The man who posted the strongest single quarter in the modern history of the Stock Division was selling absolutely nothing — which, in this industry, is worth pausing on.
What "not listed" means. The first-half release names every Stock Division entrant reporting +40% or better. Li is not among them. Working backwards from +394.9% on April 30, the account would have had to give back roughly 72%from that level to fall below the reporting line. The alternative explanation is that the account stopped reporting or withdrew.
Either way, it is the most instructive line on the whole leaderboard — and it is the reason I keep saying that the interesting question about a +396% quarter is never how, it is what happens next. He was the strongest single-quarter audit the Stock Division has produced in the modern Norm Zadeh era. Three months later he is below the fold. Nothing about that makes him a bad trader. It makes him a leveraged one, in a market that turned.
Li was also the third top-tier Hong Kong name on a USIC leaderboard in eighteen months, after Law Wai-Sum and Clement Ang, and the second Hong Kong leader of the small-account Stock Division in two years, after Martin Luk.
The rest of the H1 Stock Division
- William Haocheng Wang — +458.3% (2nd). Born in Beijing, now Los Angeles; a top-producing commercial real estate broker with Harvest Realty Development when he isn't trading.
- Martin Luk — +421.2% (3rd). Hong Kong. Won 2025 outright at +969.8% — the standing world record in the Stock Division — after +283.1% in 2024. The only name near the top with genuine multi-year proof.
- Then: M Suk Capital +238.9%, Nicholaos Stroumpakis +203.3%, Emmett Iheagwara +168.9%, Adam R. Graham +163.1%, John Rodrigues +156.4%, Heather Qi +149.8%.
And for scale, the division allocators actually watch — $1M+ stock accounts — is led by Abdulmajid M. Al Qurashi of Jeddah at +73.6%, with George Tkaczuk of RCM Wealth Advisors at +61.4%. Same market, same six months, one twelfth the headline number. Size changes everything.
Where I stand, and what I'm optimising for
Full transparency. My last published audit figure was +5.4% through April 30, 2026, in the Stock Division under Trend Alpha Corp. I finished Top 20 in the 2024 championship. This year my rules-based system has been defensively positioned for most of the year — the same posture behind why I passed on the SpaceX IPO.
That defensive stance is not modesty, it is the product. I have managed my own capital for eight years and averaged 25% a year over the last six. Compounded, 25% for six years is roughly 3.8x — and it is an average across six different market regimes, not one exceptional quarter. Investment income has covered my living costs for years now. That is the number I actually get paid on.
The championship rewards one thing: maximum aggression across twelve months. Managing private wealth rewards a different thing entirely: still being solvent, and still compounding, in year twenty. Those two objectives point in opposite directions more often than the leaderboard admits — and the Jimmy Li line above is what it looks like when they diverge inside a single quarter.
I compete anyway. Not for a trophy, but because a real-money audited account is the only honest way to publish a track record. When I tell a client my process is disciplined, there is a third party checking.
What to take from this leaderboard
- Verified beats claimed. Every number here is an audited real-money account. Ignore anyone whose returns aren't.
- Read the denominator. 83% of the world's most aggressive traders lost money in a market that rose 10.2%. Any strategy's return is meaningless without knowing what the field did.
- Size is the real test. ~400% on $20,000 and ~74% on $1,000,000+ are not comparable achievements. The second one is harder.
- One year is an anecdote. Martin Luk has 2024 and 2025 and 2026. That is a track record. Almost nothing else on this list is yet.
If you're building — or auditing — a process of your own, book a consultation.
FAQ
Who is Tom Doub of Arcadia Analytics? Dr. Tom Doub is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Arcadia Analytics, based near Nashville, Tennessee. He leads the 2026 US Investing Championship $20,000–$1,000,000 Stock Division at +880.7% through June 30, 2026. He holds a PhD in Clinical and Quantitative Psychology and was previously faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, moving to full-time algorithmic trading in 2026.
What is Tom Doub's trading strategy? Systematic and algorithmic rather than discretionary. Arcadia Analytics runs a diversified set of quantitative models across multiple timeframes, backtested across market regimes and stress-tested before deployment, with automated execution and defined position-sizing and risk controls. Doub combines statistical modelling with behavioural science, designing systems specifically to remove emotional interference from execution.
What was Tom Doub's 2026 performance quarter by quarter? +190.5% at Q1 (2nd place), +286.5% through April 30 (2nd place), and +880.7% at the half-year mark (1st place). That implies roughly +238% in Q2 alone.
Who is Tin Chun Jimmy Li? Jimmy Li is a Hong Kong-based equities trader, handle @tcjimmyli, who led the 2026 USIC Stock Division at +396.6% after Q1 — the strongest single-quarter Stock Division audit of the modern era. He does not appear in the first-half standings, which list all entrants at +40% or better.
Why is Jimmy Li not in the first-half USIC standings? The championship's July 28, 2026 release names every Stock Division entrant reporting at least +40%. Li is absent, meaning the account either fell below that threshold — a drawdown of roughly 72% from its April 30 level — or ceased reporting. The organisers have not published a reason.
How many US Investing Championship competitors are profitable in 2026? 115 of 688 entrants, or 17%, reported a profit through June 30, 2026, while the S&P 500 gained 10.2% over the same period.
Who holds the US Investing Championship stock division record? Martin Luk of Hong Kong, at +969.8% for the full 2025 year. The all-time record across all divisions is Tito Adhikary's +2,115.1% in the 2025 Enhanced Growth Division.
Victor Nelin, CFA, MBA — founder of Trend Alpha Corporation, Top 20 finisher in the 2024 U.S. Investing Championship, and a 2026 competitor. Twelve years in leadership roles at Gazprom, Sber, Google, PwC and Liga before moving to markets full time. More about Victor.
All competition figures from official United States Investing Championship standings via Business Wire releases dated April 30, 2026 and July 28, 2026. Personal return figures are self-reported except where noted as championship-audited. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Not investment advice.