Cautionary observation: The same company that judges the contest also makes more money when this specific kind of contestant wins.

> "With the Quantopian platform, anyone with a bit of coding skill and a mind for finance can start writing algorithms. The best ones win."

> The winning algorithm each month is deemed to be the one that, based on Quantopian’s analysis, offers the best combination of [...]

It is entirely possible that everything was aboveboard and honest, but there's still a latent conflict-of-interest since the company may have leeway choosing what constitutes the "best combination" of metrics.