Automated Trading Championship 2012 Has Started! At last it happened - on October 1, 2012 started the sixth Automated Trading Championship 2012 in which representatives of 59 countries will participate! Personal data is verified, Expert Advisors of all registered participants are finally checked and the list of contestants is approved. This year 451 trading robots will fight for the 80,000 US dollars prize. But for three competitors the Championship is over, more on that later. Top three places in terms of EAs allowed to the competition are traditionally shared by Russia - 156 participants (34,6%), Ukraine - 38 (8,4%) and China - 24 (5,3%). By the number of participants Belarus has been on the fourth place last year, while this year it yields to Germany with its 15 participants and now shares fifth place with Indonesia, Spain and the United States (each has 13 participants). As always, there was a large drop-out of applications from Indonesia. While at the moment of 09.21.2012 personal data of 261 representatives of this country has been approved, only 13 trading robots came to the starting line of the Championship. This is mere 5% of the original amount of competitors who passed the first step of verification. To be fair we must note that India also was in the top three by the number of submitted applications after >registration end. But only two of 193 participants who filled out their details will compete for prizes. For this Championship start we timed the release of the new version of Signals - now in order to copy deals from an account of trading signals provider all you need is to subscribe to it. The new upcoming build will let you automatically copy deals of a selected Automated Trading Championship 2012 participant directly to the MetaTrader 5 terminal. Read the full article on the Championship's website - Automated Trading Championship 2012 Has Started!
Hello! Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you are from and what you do? Hello. I'm a Physics Lecturer at University of Brawijaya in Malang, Indonesia. How did you know about financial markets and Forex trading? Did you start straight off with MetaTrader or do you have experience working with other systems? I learned about Forex around four years ago from the Internet. I started with a Java-based platform but then switched to MetaTrader which I've been using ever since. Please tell us about your trading experience. What was your first profit and loss? I started with manual trading using technical indicators. But I could not cope with the emotional side and had quite a few losses. Then I got interested in trading robots. I managed to get some profit using them which however could not cover for losses. Now I hope to get some money through participation in the Championship. If all my profits are taken into account, they will not cover all the losses. But I am still optimistic about Forex trading, especially using Expert Advisors. Read the full article on the Championship's website - Interview with Achmad Hidayat (achidayat).
Interview with Rogério Figurelli (figurelli) Hello Rogério! Tell us a little about yourself. How did you get into trading? I've always been involved with the research and development of new technologies. Since 1998 I became interested in the area of robots software, then switched into segment of real time information (news) and competitive intelligence. I was one of the pioneers in the area launching a software similar to Google News in 1999. In 2003 I founded a company, where I devote myself to the development of trading robots and technologies in the financial and quantitative systems. In 2008, in my MBA dissertation, I proposed a new investment school called Vision School, based on strategic vision for quantitative systems and still in this year I launched the first Brazilian blog in this area. Is automated trading becoming popular in Brazil? How did you get started? In my opinion, there is still a strong resistance in this area in Brazil, due to lack of tools like MetaTrader, but I'm sure the situation will change in the next few years. I have started developing my own systems in C++ in 2003, and had the first contact with MQL4 in 2007, researching Forex and its technologies. I started to migrate my systems to this platform, as well as to MQL5 from 2008. Currently, I'm using C++ and MQL5 in all of my systems, as well as integrating other tools and market solutions, such as Matlab. Read the full article on the Championship's website - Interview with Rogério Figurelli (figurelli).
Interview with Andrey Barinov (Wahoo) Hello, Andrey! Why do you have such a strange nickname Wahoo? I think, it is no stranger than any other. I was trying to invent some non-existent word initially. But it turned out to be quite a challenge. Later, I found out that Wahoo is a name of a very strong and fast fish difficult to catch. I decided that strength and speed are the things I want to be associated with. "How do you call a boat, so it will float." Very interesting! How did you start your trading activity and programming of trading robots? I started real trading a few years ago. I traded manually but the results were not so good. Then I took a rather long break. I accidentally learned about the Championship a few months ago and decided to participate. To do this, I had to master MQL5 to develop my Expert Advisor. Then I became interested in "Jobs" service and realized that I can help other people to write Expert Advisors based on their strategies. However, I also had to clarify some questions concerning MQL4, as it is still a very popular language. That is how the next stage of my Forex activity started 3 months ago. The full text of the news can be found at the Championship's website - Interview with Andrey Barinov (Wahoo).
First Week: Who Wants to Do Some Trading? The first week of the Automated Trading Championship 2012 is over. It was full of high points and interesting comments. The most impatient and "overpowered" trading robots rushed to the market looking for all possible conditions for making deals. This is not surprising considering that Expert Advisors that "fire from the hip" usually show the best results during the preliminary tests. However, none of these "quick-firing robots" managed to find themselves in the Championship's TOP-10 of the first week. Some participants have already left the Championship due to technical reasons: <ul><li>yokinfx - a critical error in the Expert Advisor caused by a code error. </li><li>song_song - the Expert Advisor contains limitation on the trading account number making it unable to trade. This issue was reported by the trading robot's developer. </li><li>Krock - the Expert Advisor refused to operate on the specified account and turned itself off leaving the following message: <pre class="code">CExpert::Init: wrong symbol or timeframe (must be AUDUSDERIOD_M1)</pre></li></ul> In fact, such errors have always been quite common at the starts of the Championships despite our warnings and recommendations. However, we wish correct operation of stability control system (wise money-management) and reliable breaks (Stop Loss should not mean Stop Out) for those participants whose trading robots are still alive and well. The first week of the competition coincided with the release of the Non-farm Payrolls report, and this was a good test for many participants. We will continue to monitor the Championship and will try to communicate the most interesting stuff. Read the full article on the Championship's website First Week: Who Wants to Do Some Trading?
Those guyz look so unhappy / pissed off. I wonder if it's a quant thing. Lots of pissed off haters on ET. Could there be a correlation?
Automated Trading Championship 2012: First Week Minutes Let us introduce you a brief statistics on the first week of the Automated Trading Championship 2012. Numeric data is presented in a convenient visual form. You will find the number of deals at all currency pairs and trading results for each of them. Brief reports on trading operations for all 12 currency pairs will be published weekly. Each report will take just a few minutes to read it over. The full text of the news can be found at the Championship's website - Championship's First Week Minutes.
I think those are computer generated avatars for the programs not real people. By the way, --- Here's the real "battle of the quants" surf http://www.battleofthequants.com/cms/index.php/videos
Follow the Participants via Signals Another innovative MetaTrader 5 service called Signals has been launched recently. Now anyone can easily become a Provider and sell Signals or subscribe to them and follow the strategy of an experienced trader. Signals can be monitored both from MQL5.community and via trading terminals. All signal providers are thoroughly checked giving subscribers some confidence when selecting a trading strategy for copying its signals on the subscriber's trading account. Subscription Advantages So, what lies behind the two clicks you need to make? Here is a small list of the main advantages: <ul><li>No need to conclude an agreement between a provider and an investor. </li><li>Copying of trading operations is fully automated. Your intervention is not required.</li><li>A Signals provider and a Subscriber may have accounts at different brokerage companies. </li><li>Ultrafast data exchange protocols greatly reduce orders execution delays on a Subscriber's account.</li><li>Data transmission is absolutely secure. </li><li>No additional broker commissions.</li></ul> The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Follow the Participants via Signals.
Second Week: Only Two Members of the Previous TOP-10 Remain The second week is over. However, real Championship leaders are not determined yet. In the meantime, spectators actively make their numerous forecasts immediately turning their attention to the new members of the first TOP-10. It is impossible to speculate on the future winners at this early stage, but everyone can subscribe to the Signals of any participant and try a new service on a demo account. This experience will be useful not only to you but also to the Championship Organizers. Only two members of the first week's TOP-10 have remained among the leaders after 5 trading days. They are <span>Crucian and </span><span>SAFF</span><span> occupying 8th and 10th places respectively</span>. Read the full article on the Championship's website - Second Week: Only Two Members of the Previous TOP-10 Remain.