Interview with Matúš German (ATC 2011)

Interview on Automated Trading Championship 2011 from 11.10.2011.

On the second day of the Championship the Expert Advisor created by Matúš German (gery18) increased its capital by 2.5 times and took the lead being ahead of all competitors. Matúš himself doubts his Expert Advisor will win, he thinks that luck and high risk were the reasons of such unexpected rise.

Matúš, tell us please about yourself and how you came to trading.

I am from Slovakia, from the little town Bardejov. I am a student at the Technical University of Košice studying economic and informatics. I am interested in trading for about 4 years and I develop Expert Advisors for 2 years already. 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.

Was it difficult to learn MQL5?

It is difficult, but the possibilities are great, you can do everything in MQL5. In MQL4 you have some limitations and if you want something special, you have to use DLL libraries and I do not like this way.

I work with MQL5 only for a short time, but for programmers it is quite easy to start using MQL5.

During the first week your Expert Advisor increased deposit by 3.5 times. Is it pure luck or planned work of your Expert Advisor?

It is both a luck and a plan. This Expert Advisor jumps up and down and risks too much, it will probably fall down the next week. I also do not think that it could win the competition, only if I have lots of luck like it was this week.

Why is your Expert Advisor named "ManagerChampion"?

I named it so because of the strategy.  When it closes a trade, the system analyzes the size of possible profit or loss it would have had, if it had been working with 1 lot. From the imaginary equity from that 1 lot it decides if it should use aggressive money management (MM) or open fewer number of lots. It is not a good idea to use only account Equity when calculating a trading volume because the Equity greatly depends on a money management method.

To calculate a trading volume I perform an averaging of results of a few previous deals: if the Equity balance is rising, aggressive money management is used, if it falls, smaller trading volume is used. I started using this method not so long ago and it probably has quite a lot of drawbacks which we will see when my Expert Advisor starts loosing its Championship rating.

What indicators are used in your Expert Advisor?

It trades with Moving Average and Williams Percent Range (%R) indicators. I use the Moving Average to identify trend, and Williams %R indicator to enter and exit trades. It works according to a similar strategy as my free system EMAplusWPR. The main changes are the MM based on Equity.

According to deals, in some cases it uses adding to loss positions. Could you please describe this moment?

Yes, it is some sort of averaging but controlled by the indicator, it is only another entry signal for the system, not price averaging in its explicit form. Therefore, the losses are quite considerable despite the fact that I install a Stop Loss quite close to a price.

How many parameters does your Expert Advisor have? What do you think about the Strategy Tester?

It has 18 inputs, but I tested and optimized only 3 for the Championship, the major part of the work on it was to choose the best settings. The tester is good, it is like in MetaTrader 4, but I think that it is faster and works more accurate with ticks.

What about Stop Loss and Take Profit levels?

I use 30 pips for Stop Loss, if the trade is not closed according to the inicator exit signal. I don’t have nearby Take Profit levels or trailing stop, exit is based only on Williams' Percent Range (%R) indicator.

Will you publish the source code of your Expert Advisor after the end of the Championship? Or did you think of commercial distribution of your EA?

I think about commercial distribution. But not the Expert Advisor that is in Automated Trading Championship 2011. Like I said, there are lots of work to do with my concept with trading with the Equity. I also want to create an EA with good martingale system implementation.

Being inspired by current results of your EA, some people think about copying its signals on real accounts. How do you think, can it be used for real trading?

I do not use it for real trading but if someone wants to copy its trades, then the money management must be first corrected according to an acoount possibilities. If I had $10000, I wouldn't trade using the Championship volumes.

What would you like to wish the Championship participants?

Good luck, of course. And let the best EA with stable strategy and equity win.

Thank you for the interview and good luck!