Let me explain. For the past two weeks, I have been participating in a simulated commodities competition with four friends from UCLA, all part of the Undergraduate Stock Trading Society. Led by our captain Kenny, our team has been trading gold and crude oil futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. We began with a $100,000 capital balance and a goal of making the top four, thus receiving a much-desired spot in the final round and a shot at paid internships with the exchange.

While not every moment in our competition was defined by the anxiety we felt on the final day, many stick out. Just one week ago, our account balance hovered at $89,830, and we trailed the leaders by over $30,000. Times were rocky. If I went long a few contracts and the price of oil suddenly fell, I’d erupt in profanity and incoherent screams. If I were watching the market and a friend attempted to talk to me, I would respond in tense, rapid-fire statements, never moving my eyes from the screen. Carl felt the ripple-effect too: he witnessed my tearful breakdown after I had lost $10,000, with the market still falling, and was subject to my lecture on utility shortly thereafter. At that point, he turned off the computer and told me to go to sleep.

But happy moments abounded too. Good decisions by Justin and Kenny in the past week rallied our account into the green. Strangely, every movement seemed to go our way. We would go long, and crude oil would leap up. We would short, and gold would fall on cue. Every day, we recorded another $10,000 gain. Suddenly, with two days left, we were within striking distance. With a capital balance of over $120,000 and the fourth place team hovering at $135,000, we felt jubilant. It felt like only a matter of time before we would rise to the top. “Lose” stopped being part of our vocabulary. On the final day of the competition, with the fourth place team at $150,000, I awoke to Kenny’s email: “Someone must’ve been praying… ’cause we’re at $145K w/ a $8k profit… we touched on $150K just a moment ago.”

I sleepily smiled. It was the last day of the competition, and winning seemed so tangible. I walked to accounting class with the market on my mind. After class ended, I met my team at Café Roma, and the real battle began. The market had fallen a bit and we were at $145,000, with the knowledge that only by reaching $160,000 could we expect to finish in the top four. Our mentality was all-or-nothing: we couldn’t just pansy around with a little capital, expecting to make small gains. It was all of our money into the market, every time. We went long on oil before it started to fall and we sold for a small profit, around $3000. Then we made a big mistake. We shorted all 26 contracts of oil as the market spiked, climbing higher and higher until I couldn’t watch anymore.

By the time Justin had arrived from his 11:00 class (I had skipped mine), we were already resigned to the fact that we probably wouldn’t win. With just 1.5 hours left and over $20K to make up, we started making our concessions. I was devastated. In the end, like I said before, we ended up covering our positions for a roughly $5000 loss, a sad way to end a roller coaster of a competition.

We did not end up placing in the top four and progressing to the final round, as we had banked upon. We did not end up beating USC, which ended up one place ahead of us at $146,372.00. We did not end up meeting our original goal of $250,000, and thus we will be running laps for every $5000 we fell behind. We did not win the commodities competition, and that thought left me feeling hollow.

But what I know now, after a day has passed, is that our ending capital balance will not be my lasting memory of the competition. Instead, I will remember the thrill of watching the crude oil market jump 175 ticks in half an hour, netting us a $7,000 gain. I will remember calling Kenny frantically at all hours, wondering why my software was so dysfunctional. I will remember Justin going long on 18 contracts of oil with an RSI of 44.65 – this is relatively crazy – and picking up a sweet $14,000 gain. I will remember Carl and Anthony and Kenny and Justin, and me, the only girl, watching the market on a beautiful Thursday morning, knowing that our competition was over and reflecting on the moment.