In practice, there are many ways of measuring trading performance and this equally true in the FTS Interactive Markets.  As a result, we will consider the question of trading performance from the perspective of a financial institution who wants to hire top traders.  What do they look for? 

It is easier to answer the negative of this question.  For example, what don't they like?  Financial institutions do not want a "Baring's bank Nick Leeson type of trader."  That is a trader who will bet the bank on the predicted movement of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.  On the other hand they would like trader who can consistently earn a positive return.  That is, a trader who consistently is above average in the trading crowd and is making money as opposed to a trader who takes large bets.  In the trading screen at the end of each trial (Period 3 in trading case B02) each trader's Grade Cash Rank, Cumulative Grade Cash Rank and Average Rank is computed.  To read this off the screen hold your cursor over Ranks in the trading screen and the "mouse-over text" will provide you with this information.  The rank is your rank in the trading crowd.  This is a good first pass measure.  Grade cash is the result of transforming Market Cash (the amount of Cash you end up with at the end of each Period/Trial see Cash in the above screen) into Grade Cash.  Grade Cash is equivalent to the bonus an institution pays it's trader.  Furthermore, the conversion from Market Cash to Grade Cash allows constraints to be imposed on a trader by their employer to avoid a "Barings Bank Episode."  The FTS Interactive markets provide various methods for computing bonuses that are designed to make traders sensitive to both risk and return.  These are described in the Moderators Manual in the trading case section. 

In the above trading screen three ranks are provided for the trader "Iceman."  See Ranks 119, 10, 70 respectively which are Rank in Current Trial, Cumulative Grade Cash Rank (Rank based upon the total of your trading bonuses across trials), Average Rank.  For the case of this Iceman example you can see that this trader is learning across trials or taking large bets over trials 1 and 2 or both?  So what gave rise to such fluctuations in the market?

To answer the above question let us look at another support feature in the FTS Interactive Trader.  At the end of each Period and Trial you get a personal histogram which at a glance reveals how you have been trading relative to if you had held your opening position.  The following two screens provide Iceman's support for Trials 1 and 2:

The above screen reveals a big change with respect to performance and the Zero 3 coupon bond.  In Trial 1 Iceman lost a lot of money by trading the Zero 3.  The first screen above see Zero 3No Trade Cash Flow 40,000.00 versus actual cash flow -431,000.  That is, Iceman lost 431,000 from trading the Zero 3 coupon bond.  This loss is the large negative bar in the top bar chart.  However, by trial 2 it looks like Iceman has figured something out about how to trade the Zero 3 coupon bond and reversed this trading performance.  In this case the Actual Cash Flow was 11,806,800 versus 40,000!  That is, either Iceman has learned how the time value of money applies to the Zero 3  bond or Iceman is taking large bets.  Finally by looking at Trial 3 performance unfortunately for the case of Iceman it may be the latter!

There are many other support features that you can explore.  For example, double clicking on any Security Name in the main trading screen brings up a price graph with real time trading support measures such as your buying and selling VWAP (Volume Weighted Average Price) relative to the market's VWAP, price graphs and the trading book.  You can pull up the entire history of your trades by clicking on the Support menu and selecting Trading History as indicated below.

You can learn a lot of how important concepts taught in the classroom apply in finance by relating your performance to the prices you are trading at.