I started at 10 and then jumped to 25, and stayed at that level to the end. The jump to 25 was a bit of a stretch but the system was in the zone early on when I did it so I let it go on a short leash and it worked out ok. My beginning balance was just over 8.5K just so you have a frame of reference. There were a couple of days where I dropped to 1-2 units because I was having technical difficulties, and some days I didn't trade at all, but losses never forced me to drop down on size. I accepted up to 25% average max account drawdown for the contest and would have been forced to size down with a 35% drawdown at my most leveraged point. For most of the contest my max accepted risk was up to 15% average max drawdown with a 25% cutoff point (where I would need to stop trading and size down), which was never reached. As I posted earlier, actual max drawdown did reach 11% at one point on an intraday basis. I never did any fancy stuff with pyramiding or martingale / anti-martingale bet sizing after the initial size up. If I were to do the contest again I would probably start with a $500 account and substantially up my leverage for the first two weeks.
Thanks! Are you entered in the October contest? Ever since the last MT4 upgrade I've had technical problems executing expert advisors (err #146). This is a MT4 bug, not necessarily IBFX's fault. I'm trying to work around it but it is going to take some doing. http://www.metaquotes.net/forum/740/ http://www.metaquotes.net/forum/742/ Did you dump IBFX after that Labor Day spike or do you still have account(s) there? The IBFX quote feed was screwing up today with EUR/USD spread > 2 pips at times. I hope they get that fixed soon. I understand they are bringing on a couple of new banks so the integration is showing some growing pains. I'm laying low for a few days to see how it works out. Too bad the kinks haven't been worked out before NFP but I still have plenty of programming projects to keep me busy.
Nice trading, Pipscooper ! How many pips did you make during that month and what was the profit factor measured in pips ?
I've got to admit, it took some serious balls to start this thread the way you did, and then stepping up and winning like that is impressive. A nice change from the usual pattern I see congrats.
I look forward to learning more about your systems and methodology for developing them. I won two IBFX contests in a row but since then I've done nothing but lose money. Perhaps my experts aren't optimized to recent price action. Or maybe they weren't very good to begin with. I guess I'm wondering if there is such a thing as a consistent moneymaking mechanical system -- an expert that doesn't need to be tweaked every month or year. Also, I'm wondering if you rely on backtesting to develop your models
Welcome. Nope havent joined the october contest. Currently focusing on running my accounts as I have stepped up the risk. I have already dumped IBFX after that bad data problem (and subsequent problems made me feel rather smug about that move). I use FXDD now to trade. I am planning on joining one of the contests with small capital just to play around. Do your models trade during NFP or other big fundamental releases? I do not trade them as I find that trading them on a systematic basis brings in an incredible amount of risk almost making it a gamble. Good luck in october.
Disagree. Its platform may not look as fancy as some other platforms, but I like the fixed spread. Execution is fair. It is also very easy to use.
They offer 3 versions of the platform: java, desktop (also on java technology) and HTML. My experience has been that java/desktop is much more stable than HTML. Although HTML does not require any installations, so it has its benefits too.