James Buchan from Ottawa was able to find opportunity in very difficult market conditions, generating a 31.90% return over a two-month period.

Bucnan’s stellar return earned him $5,000 cash as the grand prize winner of the Horizons ETFs Biggest Winner Competition, which was run and sponsored by Horizons Exchange Traded Funds Inc. and hosted on Stockhouse.com.

Nearly 1,400 people registered to participate in the competition, which ran from April 10 to May 31. The competition used a real-time virtual online brokerage account, where investors bought and sold any of the 86 ETFs offered by Horizons ETFs throughout any trading day. Each participant’s virtual trading account was funded with $100,000 of fantasy dollars for them to trade the ETFs. More than 21,500 ETF trades were made during the course of the competition.

Buchan’s best ETF trade was a well-timed purchase of the Horizons BetaPro S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Bull Plus ETF, which generated a $12,280 return for his account.

The runner-up in the competition, who earned a $1,000 cash prize, was John McDonald from Toronto, who generated a 31.89% return, less than 0.01% behind the first place return and which represented a difference of about $8 in account value.

Buchan and McDonald were joined by 78 other participants who generated double-digit returns of 10% or greater during the nearly two months the competition ran.

“Generating a double-digit market return during any two-month period is impressive enough. To do so during a period where the stock markets are negative is phenomenal,” said Howard Atkinson, president & CEO of Horizons ETFs, in a release. “These are the kind of returns you read about coming from prominent hedge fund managers, but the participants in our competition are not household name fund managers, they are investors from all walks of life. It just goes to show, you don’t have to work on Bay Street to be a top-notch investor.”

Many major asset classes delivered negative returns while the competition was running. In fact, 54% of the participants beat the S&P/TSX 60 index return of -3.49% during the course of the contest.

In total, more than $10,000 in cash prizes were handed out during the course of the competition, including eight $500 weekly prizes to the portfolios with best weekly returns.