The winning team for this year’s CME Group University Trading Challenge had a secret weapon: experience.

Santiago Chisco, a senior law student at University of Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano, and the team leader for Tadeofutures, was part of a team that placed fourth in the 2018 tournament. Tadeofutures’ win this year makes them the second consecutive team from South America to win, as last year marked the first time a team from Latin America came out on top.

Tadeofutures’ final account balance after 30 days of trading was $1,741,360, which is the highest-ever simulated balance in the competition’s 18-year history. This year’s challenge, which kicked off Oct. 3 and concluded Oct. 29, was open to undergraduate and graduate students around the world. It included 386 teams representing 167 schools across 24 countries. In total, 1,549 students participated in the four-week competition where they traded 112 different futures products. However, crude oil was the top contract traded overall, with 160,310 contracts changing hands, out of a total 659,955 contracts traded.

It wasn’t just Chisco’s prior experience in the challenge that gave him an edge over other students. He has also studied the markets since 2015, with the goal to work for a proprietary trading firm upon graduation. In 2018 his team achieved a fourth place victory in the challenge.

Since that time, Chisco has closely monitored E-Mini S&P 500 and crude oil futures, studying the markets in classes and on his own, and adapting different trading strategies over time.

For this competition, he and the team exclusively traded crude oil futures contracts, deciding on a mix of technical and fundamental analysis for their strategy. Chisco explains that the team focused on volume and price action generated on daily opening and closing levels, while also looking at weekly action. They acted when key price levels were triggered on daily and weekly chart points, but they also kept an eye on intraday volume and price action, sometimes trading based on five-minute charts.

Part of the trading plan was to use stops and take profits on schedule. The team also watched supply and demand fundamental data as it came out, in the event that it affected price action. Although Chisco had monitored crude oil prices for a few years, the CME Group University Trading Challenge gave him an opportunity to put the skills he learned into practice. He found it wasn’t always easy to stick to the strategy.

“It was psychologically challenging to execute the strategy during the challenge,” Chisco admits. “As a trader, it is important to have confidence.”