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.

Today’s update to the MetaTrader expert advisors on my site isn’t very original. For many people MACD Sample expert advisor was the first EA that they tried on the MT4 strategy tester. It’s a well known sample advisor from MetaQuotes, designed to show the basic Forex strategy implementation for the MQL. The one that is now freely available on my site differs slightly from the original version. I’ve decided to make some enhancements and optimized it for GBP/USD pair and H4 (4 hour) timeframe.

In a one year backward test it made about 44% of the initial deposit with 0.3 standard lot position size. The drawdown also wasn’t small, but 10% is quite good, in my opinion. Download this expert advisor and try it for yourself. If you get some interesting results with it on forward tests, don’t hesitate to contact me.

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.