Myfxbook/ VantageFX Trading Championship February 2012

[Dr_T]

So, as a 'newbie' to the world of FX, when myfxbook sent me an email about the February 2012 VantageFX Trading Championship I decided to sign up and let some buggy code loose in a safe environment. The contest started on Feb 1st and it's been an interesting experience so far!

Firstly, when the latest incarnation of RAI returned $1000 on his initial deposit of $50k in the first day of trading, I was pretty pleased... until I looked at the leader board and saw that the top 10 were pushing 100% profit!!!

Feeling somewhat foolish, I thought that I'd take a look how and what the leaders had been trading. Perhaps I could learn lessons to pass on to RAI? It seems that to win, RAI needs to trade very high volumes... and never run a loss.

Well, my aim is to finish the contest... if the final balance is in profit, then that will be a bonus and a triumph for a pretty naive artificial neural network trader.

Last time I checked, RAI had slipped from 200th on the leader board to well below 700... but we're still in profit. Unfortunately it looks like RAI's open positions won't become profitable before the broker closes for the weekend...

Anyway, I thought that I'd share my experiences here for anyone else who is struggling to find profit in this fascinating world known as FX!

Cheers,

Dr T

[Jim]

Hi Dr T.

I also entered Ray in the very same championship, but what with one thing and another I forget to set him running on February 1st

I'll see if I can remember to press his "ON" button this weekend, and then maybe we can compare notes as the month progresses? Here are Ray's results so far. He's currently down in position 2109 out of 2700

To win such a contest your robot needs to turn its "RISK" knob up to maximum, then cross its fingers (if it has any) for a month. Using such techniques Ray managed to come in 28th in a similar contest last year. The winner on that occasion managed 4,043.24% profit!

Cheers,

Jim

[Jim]

I pressed Ray's ON button after the markets opened last night, but for some reason Vantage's servers didn't want to take any of his orders:

23:29:24 VFX Trader 4.00 build 409 started (VantageFX Pty Ltd.)
23:29:25 Expert RayFeb2011 EURUSD,M1: loaded successfully
23:29:29 '151809': login
23:30:04 '151809': order sell market 1.00 EURUSD sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
23:30:05 '151809': request was accepted by server
23:33:22 '151809': order sell 1.00 EURUSD opening at 0.00000 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000 failed [Trade timeout]
23:33:22 Expert stdlib EURUSD,M1: loaded successfully
23:33:24 '151809': order sell market 1.00 GBPUSD sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
23:33:25 '151809': request was accepted by server
23:36:42 '151809': order sell 1.00 GBPUSD opening at 0.00000 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000 failed [Trade timeout]
23:36:45 '151809': order buy market 1.00 USDJPY sl: 0.000 tp: 0.000
23:36:45 '151809': request was accepted by server
23:40:00 '151809': order buy 1.00 USDJPY opening at 0.000 sl: 0.000 tp: 0.000 failed [Off quotes]
23:40:00 '151809': order sell market 1.00 USDCAD sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
23:40:01 '151809': request was accepted by server
23:43:20 '151809': order sell 1.00 USDCAD opening at 0.00000 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000 failed [Trade timeout]
23:43:22 '151809': order buy market 1.00 EURJPY sl: 0.000 tp: 0.000
23:43:23 '151809': request was accepted by server
23:46:40 '151809': order buy 1.00 EURJPY opening at 0.000 sl: 0.000 tp: 0.000 failed [Trade timeout]
23:46:43 '151809': order sell market 1.00 USDCHF sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
23:46:43 '151809': request was accepted by server
23:50:00 '151809': order sell 1.00 USDCHF opening at 0.00000 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000 failed [Trade timeout]

However at some point in the small hours things must have burst into life. This morning Ray finally has some profitable trades under his belt, and he's raced up the leaderboard to position 841:

2012-02-06_0950_Ray.png

He's a very long way behind the leader though, who's currently up 287% after 1455 supposedly manual trades!

2012-02-06_0951_Leaders.png

How's RAI getting along?

[Dr_T]

RAI is in 400th place... just don't look at his equity value!

[Jim]

RAI is in 400th place... just don't look at his equity value!

Whoops! I just did, and I see what you mean. For the moment at least, RAI's profit factor of 15728.30 is certainly pretty impressive!

Ray's luck has held, and he has had a good day so far. He is now up 14% and in position 699:

2012-02-07_1912_Ray.png

It seems that like Ray quite a few contestants, including the previous leader SAFX, were unable to place any trades on Sunday night. Whether as a consequence of that or not, this evening there is a new leader (showing a total profit thus far of over 600%) and SAFX has dropped out of sight:

2012-02-07_1952_Leaders.png

[Dr_T]

It was only on Monday morning that I noticed that my MT4 platform wasn't doing anything and had to restart.

It looks like Ray may well be passing RAI at some point in the next few days, do wave on your way past! RAI struggled a bit today and opened a bunch of sell orders at the bottom of the day's range, so I'm holding them open and hoping they come good tomorrow... or the next day... or the next!

I noticed that there was a new leader. RAI doesn't believe in 600% profits!

[Jim]

Hi Dr. T,

It looks like Ray may well be passing RAI at some point in the next few days, do wave on your way past!

After a long and bitter struggle Ray has finally managed to amass a profit of over 80% and thereby scramble up to position 122 in the rankings, just one ahead of RAI:

2012-02-27_RAYnRAI.png

As you can see from Ray's equity curve, there have been one or two ups and downs along the way:

2012-02-27_RAY.png

Now all of us here at the Trading Gurus are crossing our fingers on Ray's behalf, and hoping most of his Martingale Money Management Modules (MMMM for short) don't kick into overdrive again before the contest finishes in two days time. A quick glance at RAI's own equity curve suggests he may be in for a bit of a shock when March 1st arrives though! Is he utilising some sort of hold until profitable (HUP for short) strategy?

Cheers,

Jim

[Dr_T]

Hi Jim,

Well done to Ray, he is certainly a worthy ambassador of Martingale trading...

Anyway, as you have seen from RAI's equity curve, I'm afraid that the veneer of neural success is likely to come crashing down to reality at the end of the month! RAI is meant to 'intelligently' decide both when to enter and exit positions. This includes making that all too emotional decision to get out of a losing trade. Unfortunately, it turns out that RAI has discovered this difficulty first hand and has stubbornly held some very lossy positions open for most of the contest. In fact, I'm tempted to say that RAI's exit code isn't working properly! I've yet to look at the logs to see if RAI tried to exit the positions.

RAI is running without emergency stop loss orders, it seems that the competition doesn't allow fixed stop and take profit limits on market orders. So, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to leave RAI to trade and see what happens. Needless to say, RAI won't be dealing in real notes any time soon. However, there is an interesting result buried within the trade history. It seems that RAI has an uncanny ability to spot market lows and highs... unfortunately RAI trades in the wrong direction at these points. However, once a short trend is established RAI does appear to work quite well at trend following. That said, if I could predict where trends start and end, then I think that I would be able to follow them too!

Cheers,

Dr T

[Jim]

Hi Dr. T,

Well done to Ray, he is certainly a worthy ambassador of Martingale trading...

There's still plenty of time for it all to end in tears. Mr. Martingale makes sure of that, if left in charge of things long enough......

It seems that the competition doesn't allow fixed stop and take profit limits on market orders.

Whoops! I forgot to mention that in here. When Vantage FX did finally get around to accepting Ray's orders he quickly discovered he had to turn on his "StpMode" switch, which allows him to quickly add a stop and target to filled market orders.

Cheers,

Jim

[Jim]

Hi Dr. T,

Well the contest is over, the results have been published, and Ray is now very unhappy. I've taken RAI's name in vain (and yours too!) in a blog post highlighting the dangers of losing sight of ones account equity. I hope that's OK with you and RAI? Please let me know if not!

Cheers,

Jim