Three Weeks of the Weekly Cash Cup: How It Works and How the Leaderboards Played Out

Published September 5, 2026 · MongoTrader Team

Since mid-August, MongoTrader has run a real-money league every single week: the Weekly Cash Cup, a $200 prize pool decided purely by percentage return on simulated portfolios. Three cups are in the books. Here is how the format works, who is eligible, how the money is split, and what the first three leaderboards looked like.

Every league on MongoTrader is a skill-based contest on the same live markets with the same simulated money. Most leagues pay out in $MON, our virtual currency. The Weekly Cash Cup is different in exactly one way: the prize pool is US dollars. Everything else, from the order mechanics to the leaderboard math, is the paper-trading engine you already use.

The format

• One cup every week. Entries open on Sunday, trading runs Monday through Wednesday, and standings lock at 11:59 PM Eastern on Wednesday night.
• $200 prize pool, platform funded. Nobody's entry fee goes into the pot. The pool is the same size whether ten people enter or two hundred.
• Entry costs 25 $MON. That is virtual currency you earn daily, not money. If it is your first league ever, the fee is waived. See how $MON works.
• Ranked by percentage return. Your portfolio's gain or loss from the value it had when you entered. Account size does not matter, only how well you managed what you had.
• Minimum ten entries. If a cup does not reach ten players, the pool is not distributed and every fee is refunded.
• Re-entry is available. Off to a bad start? You can reset your baseline to 0% at your portfolio's current value, up to three times, for the entry fee again. Re-entry closes for the final 20% of the trading window. Details in our rules update.

Who can enter

Cash-prize leagues are open to players who are physically located in an eligible US state when they enter. MongoTrader checks your device's location and cross-checks it against your connection, and it runs the same check again when you withdraw winnings, because you may have moved between entering and cashing out. There is no way around this with a VPN, and cash leagues cannot be entered through the developer API; they are for humans in the app. The full eligibility list and the withdrawal rules are in How USD Cash-Prize Leagues Work.

How the $200 is split

The pool is distributed on a geometric curve that is weighted toward the top but keeps paying down the board. With a full field, first place takes roughly $75, second about $47, third about $29, fourth about $18, fifth about $11, and smaller shares continue from there. A top-ten finish in a crowded cup is worth real money, and the shape of the curve rewards protecting a good position over swinging for the fences on Wednesday afternoon.

Winnings are credited to your MongoTrader wallet and can be withdrawn to PayPal after a 14-day holding period. Withdrawals are $10 minimum and $500 maximum per request, carry a $2 processing fee that is waived at $50 and above, and require a two-factor code.

How the first three cups played out

Three cups have run to completion so far, and all three pools have been settled. The fields were large and the leaderboards told very different stories from week to week.

• Week of August 16 (traded August 17 to 19): 187 entries. The winning portfolio finished up 27.1% in three sessions, with second and third place close behind at 23.9% and 23.7%. A concentrated, high-conviction week: the top of the board was decided by a handful of big moves.
• Week of August 23 (traded August 24 to 26): 197 entries, the biggest field yet. A far quieter tape. First place finished at +8.9%, and the gap to second (+4.8%) was the widest of any cup, which tells you one portfolio caught a move the rest of the field missed.
• Week of August 30 (traded August 31 to September 2): 194 entries. The tightest podium of the three: +7.7%, +7.3% and +6.8% for the top three. In a week like that, a single bad fill on Wednesday afternoon is the difference between first and third.

Two patterns are already clear. First, the winning number depends enormously on the week: a 27% return took the first cup, while 8% was enough two weeks later. Chasing a fixed target is the wrong plan; beating the field is the right one. Second, the middle of the leaderboard is crowded and mostly flat. Most entrants finished within a couple of percent of zero, which means a disciplined portfolio that simply avoids the big loss finishes ahead of half the field before it makes a single winning trade.

What the top finishers did differently

We do not publish anyone's trades, but the shape of the leaderboards points at the same habits we see in every strong league run.

1. They sized for a three-session window. The cup is short. A position that needs two weeks to work is a position that will not be scored. The top portfolios were built around moves that could play out by Wednesday.
2. They protected the number they had. On the flat weeks, the podium was decided by who gave back the least on the last day. A stop-loss and a plan for the close beat one more roll of the dice.
3. They used the calendar. Standings lock Wednesday night. A gap on Thursday morning does not count for or against you, so holding through it is a free decision only if you are already where you want to be.
4. They did not overtrade. Percentage return punishes churn. The strongest runs came from a few well-chosen positions, not dozens of tickets.

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