Forex Blog

MetaQuotes Software is organizing its third yearly automated trading championship (basically a contest of the expert advisors). There are three sponsoring Forex brokers this time — FXCM, Interbank FX and FXDD. The total prize funds are $80,000 with $40,000 going for the first place, $25,000 — for the second one and $15,000 — for the third. The registration for the championship opened today, July 1, and will last until September 19th. The automated contest itself will start on October 1st and will run for almost 3 months until December 26th.

As always, this is a pure virtual money contest (but with the eal money prizes of course), which is free for anyone to participate. The expert advisors should be written for MetaTrader 4 platform and can be both in form of the source files (*.mq4) and in compiled form (*.ex4). The last year contest showed some very brilliant Forex expert advisor ideas with more than 1,300% gain on the winning one. This time the quality of the participants’ submission may get even better.

My expert advisor for the 2007 championship was quite lossy and I hope to get a rematch this time. I’ve already registered for this competition and I am looking forward to optimize some interesting EA before the contest starts.

Register for Automated Trading Championship 2008.

The Automated Trading Championship 2007, which was started by the MetaQuotes Software Corp. (the company that made MetaTrader trading platform), ended yesterday and the winners have been announced:

Participant Better earned the first prize of $40,000 with his outstanding neural network expert advisor, which has turned $10,000 into $130,475.45 in 12 trading weeks. Too bad this has been done on demo account, not real :-). A very interesting result with almost 150% distance from the second place. Unfortunately his expert advisor won’t be available to the public, as he refuses to sell or reveal it.

Second prize is going to user wackena, who made $55,042.10 out of $10,000 - a lot less than Better’s EA, but still a very convincing result - 450% in over 3 months. The prize for wackena is $25,000.

Third position belongs to user with the nickname Pegasmaster. His expert advisor earned him $15,000 prize, making $39,945.81 balance during the competition.

My own attempt at this championship made it to the 179th place with $6,684.44 balance left - making it a big loser expert advisor. I had no time not only to forward testing it before championship start, but also to backtest it on some accurate data. Anyway I’ve tried and probably in the next championship I will end up with at least a bit better result :-).

Congratulations to the winners and better luck to all who will participate in the next year’s contest!

FXcast Forex broker announced a Forex traders competition which will be held on real accounts from the 1st till 30th of November with the best trader to receive $5,000 prize. Minimum account size for the competition is not high - just $250, but that will surely add more adrenaline for the participants and will make the whole event more exciting. On the other side - real accounts will stop some traders from entering this championship. Nevertheless, such competition can be useful for all Forex traders as their skills will be tested both against big greed and the excessive moderation.

If you want to join the competition follow these guidelines:

1. FXcast will start a trading competition on the real accounts Forex market (no demo accounts).
2. Become a customer of FXcast if you are not already one.
3. Open a special competition account in your membership area.
4. Deposit $250 to your competition account.
5. Start trading at the 1st of November.
6. The trader with the highest closing ballance (no open positions!) on November the 30th will be declared a winner and receive $5,000 in cash.

Good luck with winning on Forex!

MetaQuotes Software Corp. conjointly with ODL Securities, Alpari, FXDD and Traders’ Magazine is starting its second annual Automated Trading Championship for Fore trading. In this contest traders compete not only in their trading skill, but in their programming skills. All orders and positions management is done by the competitors’ fully automated expert advisors for Metatrader 4 platform. This brings some new and original excitement compared to traditional trading contests, because once an expert advisor was submitted and championship started, trader/programmer can’t influence the trading process at all.
This is not the first time MetaQuotes Software organizes such championship. Last year was debut for the Automated Trading Championshiop 2006 which dragged attention of 258 developers from all over the world.
This time almost 750 participants already registered themselves on the Championship website while it is still 44 days left for the registration period (which ends on 21st of September). The contest will start on the 1st of October and will last almost three months till the 21st of December.
The prizes for the winners of Automated Trading Championship 2007 (three traders with the highest balance available at the end of the contest) are quite high and are likely to serve for the potential competitors as a great motivation to develop and improve their automated expert advisors and trading strategies in general. 1st Prize is $40,000, 2nd - $25,000 and 3rd - $15,000 - so it is $80,000 in total - quite impressing, isn’t it?
I would like to wish all those who will participate in this contest a good luck and a profitable trading. By the way, MetaQuotes Software held an on-line interview with me on the topic of automated trading and Forex trading in general. It is now published at their website and you can find it here.