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).

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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!

Throughout the entire duration of the Automated Trading Championship 2012, we will be providing live coverage of the events - hot reports and interviews every week. As the first few days of the competition unfold and the TOP 10 is forming, some participants have already broken through with their Expert Advisors. Thus wlagor's equity increased to $20.000 the very first day.

This report spotlights Achmad Hidayat (achidayat), the participant from Indonesia. On the first day of the Championship his Expert Advisor secured its position in the third ten, which is a good start. Achmad has sparked our interest with his active participation in the MQL5 Market. He has already published over 20 products thus far.

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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).

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.

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Some participants have already left the Championship due to technical reasons:

 

1. yokinfx - a critical error in the Expert Advisor caused by a code error.
2. 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.
3. Krock - the Expert Advisor refused to operate on the specified account and turned itself off leaving the following message: [code]CExpert::Init: wrong symbol or timeframe (must be AUDUSDERIOD_M1)[/code]

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?

It was on Friday of the Championship's first week that the trading robot of Andrey Barinov (Wahoo) occupied the fifth place in TOP-10. Andrey is a newcomer in the Championship but he has already managed to execute more than 100 orders in Jobs and develop a dozen of products for Market. We have arranged an interview with him and learned that the development of a "simple multicurrency Expert Advisor" is not an easy but a fairly easy task.

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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).

By the end of first week our Championship has got a new leader Crucian from Ukraine. His Expert Advisor confidently took profit of $7000 and yet continues to open a profitable position. We will carefully monitor the situation, preparing new reports.

Today we are going to talk with Rogério Figurelli (figurelli), a regular participant from Brazil that has not missed any Automated Trading Championship since 2007. This year, he also began to sell his Championship's Expert Advisor in the Market along with his other products. Rogério believes that MetaTrader 5 platform certification on the largest Brazilian exchange BM&FBOVESPA will reveal new professional developers and traders, who do not yet know the full potential of robot investors.

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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).

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.

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The full text of the news can be found at the Championship's website - Championship's First Week Minutes.

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.

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Subscription Advantages

So, what lies behind the two clicks you need to make? Here is a small list of the main advantages:

 

1. No need to conclude an agreement between a provider and an investor.
2. Copying of trading operations is fully automated. Your intervention is not required.
3. A Signals provider and a Subscriber may have accounts at different brokerage companies.
4. Ultrafast data exchange protocols greatly reduce orders execution delays on a Subscriber's account.
5. Data transmission is absolutely secure.
6. No additional broker commissions.

The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Follow the Participants via Signals.

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 Crucian and SAFF occupying 8th and 10th places respectively.

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Read the full article on the Championship's website - Second Week: Only Two Members of the Previous TOP-10 Remain.

Today we interview Francisco García García (chuliweb) from Spain. A week ago his Expert Advisor reached the 8th place, but the unfortunate logic error in programming threw it from the first page of the Championship leaders. As confirmed by statistics, such an error is not uncommon for many participants. We will cover it in details in one of the upcoming news, but today we are going to talk with the Championship participant.

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Francisco, tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you do?
I'm from a small town Huéscar near Granada. I have a degree in Computer Science at the University of Granada and work by vocation as a school teacher. I enjoy my profession. I have registered at the MQL5.community to participate in the Championship as I wanted to test myself.
So you have some experience in programming?
Yes, I write in many languages: C, C++, Java, PHP, Perl, ASP, LISP.While knowing the general principles well enough, it is not difficult to understand the features of a particular language. Each one of them fits its own range of tasks, you just need to choose the right tool.
Read the full article on the Championship's website - Interview with Francisco García García (chuliweb).

What can be more complicated than a multicurrency trading robot? Surely, it is an automated strategy based on Elliott Wave Principle. Can we imagine something more complicated than that? Yes, we can. It is a multicurrency Expert Advisor using Elliott Waves on each currency pair! Alexander Prishchenko (Crucian) believes that even a newcomer can learn the rules. It is the third week already as his simple (as he says) Expert Advisor occupies TOP-10.

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How long did it take to understand the basics of trading?

There was a period of study, but not a long one. I bought Pound, opened the terminal a week later and found a fabulous sum on my trading account. )) I deposited a few dollars to my account and made some good trading until the Swiss National Bank performed currency intervention. I even started a forum thread about it because the price had jumped 200 points high.

Quite an exciting start. Have you studied some special materials?
I have studied Elliott Wave Principle. I am trying to follow it right now. I tried to invent my own rules at first but then I realized that everything has been invented before us. So, I just need to thoroughly examine the theory and follow it to succeed. Of course, you also need to use your own experience, as the market is constantly changing.

The full text of the news can be found at the Championship's website - Interview with Alexander Prishchenko (Crucian).

Minutes of the Bank of England actuate GBP, minutes of the Bank of Japan actuate JPY, while Championship minutes actuate interesting information. As we have promised, we present brief statistics on the trading results of the second week of the Automated Trading Championship 2012.

Here you will know about the distribution of the number of deals, profits and losses at each currency pair, as well as the average result of each trading deal.

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The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Championship's Second Week Minutes.

The third week of the Championship has not changed our TOP-10 significantly. Seven participants out of ten ones have remained in the list. The first two places are still occupied by ROMAN5 and JPAlonso. However, they have switched places and their trading accounts have increased.

Most currency pairs showed a trend on H4 last week with a slight turn on Wednesday. It seems that such a behavior is quite suitable for the current leaders. Most of them trade EURUSD. USDCAD has turned out to be the most unstable pair. This is the pair traded by AlexRod (Russia). It is perhaps for this reason that his trading robot has left TOP-10.

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The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Third Week: Current Leaders Identified.

Hello, Egidijus! Tell us a little about yourself.
Hello! I live and work in Lithuania. I received a degree in economics.
I've been installing, programming and consulting in the area of business management systems for 15 years. I have also created and adapted special financial modules for manufacturing business.

It is the fourth year already that I've been working on Forex. I have reviewed the work of more than 1 000 various Forex indicators and robots. I have revealed the principles of the profitable automated trading and developed ForexTraderisPro program based on several different strategies. I constantly develop new profitable strategies and enhance my program trying to increase profit and reduce investment risks.

How did you start your Forex activity? Was it your education that sparked your interest in this market?
Yes, probably. I studied shares and options at the university. I traded them for some time and then switched to more stable work. Four years ago I became interested in that again but I wanted to try the more liquid Forex market that time.

The full text of the news can be found at the Championship's website - Interview with Egidijus Bockus (Egidijus).

We continue to publish our brief weekly reports displaying dynamics of the Championship currency pairs. Pound and Yen are main "heroes" of our today's Minutes. We present statistical data on trading results shown by the Championship's participants during the third week.

Here you will know about the distribution of the number of deals, profits and losses at each currency pair, as well as the average result of each trading deal.

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The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Championship's Third Week Minutes.

Twenty trading days of the first month of the Automated Trading Championship 2012 are over, and we have already got used to the current leaders. The first two places are still occupied by mysterious JPAlonso (USA) and ROMAN5 (South Africa). Both had no losses up to the last day of the last week when the long position having 15 lots at JPAlonso's account was closed by Stop Loss. However, his trading robot has opened the new long position with the same maximum volume after three minutes.

Such persistence has seemed to be justified at the time, as the robot has entered the weekends having the floating profit exceeding $6 500. We have not yet been able to find out why the Expert Advisor called El Trader is acting in such an extravagant way. Its developer does not appear on the Championship website and keeps silence.

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Read the full text of the news on the Championship's website - Fourth Week: All Is Well for Now.

It's the second time Matúš German participates in the Automated Trading Championship. By the end of the fourth week of ATC 2012 his Expert Advisor has been holding its positions in the TOP-10 having about $30 000. Matúš is from Slovakia, from the little town Bardejov. "I came to trading when I was looking for an opportunity to work through the Internet, I knew that it is possible to make money with stocks but I was interested in the possibilities to trade using only technical analysis" he said.

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Greetings! It's nice to meet you again among the Championship Participants. What were the most notable events in your life and trading experience for the last year?
For the last year, I have destroyed 2 Forex accounts but I think that I have found my "Holy grail". Of course, it is not the system that I have submitted to the Championship, as it must be very risky to have a chance to win and I cannot check the system in the Championship to optimize it for the current market.

You were at 183rd place in the Automated Trading Championship 2011. What experience did you get from it?
It was no surprise to me. In such a competition the system must be very risky to have a chance to win. But I was glad that the system worked without problems.

The full text of the news can be found at the Championship's website - Interview with Matúš German (gery18).

Anton, please tell us a little about yourself. This is your first championship, but apparently you have a rich experience in trading.
Yes, this is indeed my first Championship. I have worked as a software developer for the past 20 years in the engineering, medical, educational and financial sectors. In my personal capacity I have been trading online for the past 10 years. My love for finance and software development makes the perfect combination for the development of automated trading systems. In my spare time, I enjoy sports. My favorite sport at the moment is Squash, and I play 3-4 times a week.

Judging by deals, your EA is always in the market. It also does averaging if price is going in wrong direction. Does it enter the market by oversold/overbought CCI? Why do you use Heiken Ashi?
I have experimented with different Expert Advisors, but chose to enter current one for the competition, because it stays in the market, so there are no "dead" moments. Something is always happening. If the price goes in the wrong direction, I work on averaging or Stop Loss depending on the situation.
I use oversold/overbought CCI to enter the market and Heiken Ashi to exit. Heiken Ashi performed better than CCI on the back test, so that's why I opted to go with that indicator to exit the market.

The full text of the news can be found at the Championship's website - Interview with Anton Nel (ROMAN5).

The fourth week of the Automated Trading Championship 2012 is over and it is time to examine its results in details. EURUSD is losing profit, while USDJPY is gaining momentum. What else has happened this week? Let's have a look!

Here you will know about the distribution of the number of deals, profits and losses at each currency pair, as well as the average return of each trading deal.

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The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Championship's Fourth Week Minutes.

The fifth week of the Automated Trading Championship 2012 is over and we can sum up the first results. The gap between the current leader JPAlonso and SAFF (Russia) occupying the tenth place has increased again comprising $60 000. We cannot say if it is possible to reduce that gap yet. However, we should remember that it is often not necessary to catch up with the Championship leader. Sometimes, it may be enough to wait for a leading trading robot to make a mistake and leave the top positions.

However, there is no reason to worry about JPAlonso (USA) yet - his trading robot has performed more than 20 trades within a month. According to the Rules of the Signals service, this robot's signals could have been put up for sale. Though subscription to trading signals of all Automated Trading Championship 2012 participants is free, future profits are not guaranteed.

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The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Fifth Week: Leader's Position More Stable Than Ever.

Let us provide you with data on deals and positions as of the end of the fifth competition week in our usual "Minutes of the Automated Trading Championship 2012". The main event of the week is the positive difference of the floating profit and loss. This has become possible mainly thanks to the most popular currency pair of the Championship - EURUSD! Let's see what else has happened this week!
Here you will know about the distribution of the number of deals, profits and losses at each currency pair, as well as the average result of each trading deal.

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The full text of the news can be found on the Championship's website - Championship's Fifth Week Minutes.