TheStreet.com's trading contest joins CNBC's in a cheating scandal

Posted Jun 11th 2007 6:20PM by Peter Cohan
Filed under: Internet, Scandals

TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM) has announced that its trading contest shared something with CNBC's Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge -- they both featured cheating contestants.

In case you did not participate, On April 2, TSCM launched a stock market trading game, "Beat the Street," which ran until May 31. The game had a cash prize of $100,000. But TSCM does not plan to award that $100,000.

Why not? "The final results of the game indicate that players employed trading strategies to achieve returns that could not be duplicated in the real world, thereby depriving other contestants of an equal chance to win." And the $100,000 will be added to the $50,000 that TSCM originally planned to award the winner of the next contest iteration: "Beat the Street 2.0."

I'd love to know more about the strategies employed and why they couldn't be duplicated in "the real world." Ironically, I doubt this "news" site will be breaking any news on that front. If you can shed any light on what happened here, please share.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned in this post.

Tags: Cheating, CNBC, Contest, TheStreet.com, Trading, TSCM

Print this

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

6-11-2007 @ 7:02PM

Jason Y. said...

i received an e-mail earlier today from them...and began noticing the statements at cnbc.com a few weeks ago.. i knew something was up when both sites went down. the cnbc contestants/cheaters were a little more tactful with their gains where as the street's top players made hundreds of millions on a $100,000 investment compared to my measly 50% return.. those jackasses! (wish i figured out the secret =P) anyway..cheating does not pay.

6-11-2007 @ 8:31PM

BeatTheStreet said...

I don't believe The Street said anything about cheating. That is, I still haven't heard anything about a loophole like the CNBC method.

If the players stayed within the contest rules, how is employing "trading strategies to achieve returns that could not be duplicated in the real world" relevant at all?

I mean I like the idea of another 100k to the next winner, but I still think the first winner should be paid.