With so many new contest developments, I'm not sure how
many of you guys have been aware of the Fundamental contest. It has been
running for more than a month now and I think that it has yet to
receive full attention from community, as this contest has
great potential. As a former winner of the Fundamental contest, I think I
do have the legitimacy to speak about it and to give some advice to
newcomers. Well, you may say that anyone can be lucky for one week and
you may be right, but not only that I've been winning the contest but
I've been showing consistency over the last month, finishing in the top 5
rank almost every week.
If you are a
fundamental trader who has an innate ability to predict short term
market reaction to certain news announcements, you can show your skills
in this contest more than you can do it in the Trader Contest. What does
it takes to win the FA contest? There is for sure more than just luck
involved, you got to have the required skills in order to have a change
to win the contest.
There are three main ingredients you have to keep in mind in order to have a chance to win the FA contest: research, quality and originality.
Research
As per the definition, research means studious inquiry or examination; especially : investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws. As you may guess this is the main item which will impact the outcome of your overall rank in the contest. If you want to increase the accuracy of your forecasts you have to be willing to put in the time and do some research about each news item release.
In your research you must cover the following tasks:
- What was the market reaction to this type of news in the past? Bullish, Bearish, Neutral
- Look for the actual trend for each news item and the overall economic condition
- Each news item has different economic impact on the market. There are three types of market impact, Low impact, Medium Impact, and High Impact. You have more changes to get your forecast right on the news with high impact as market reaction in the first 10 minute tend to be a one direction movement compared to the news with Low-Medium impact as the market tends to create too many whipsaws and your chance of guessing correctly decrease.
- Keep in mind what are the experts forecast for the current news item, thus what is the market expectation for the current news item? The market is paying attention to the forecast as any big miss in the data release can have a high market impact.
Quality
The
quality of your submitted predictions is not something to disregard as
it can make the difference in case of tight score, and you can earn more
points from valuation. Don't forget that each point gained is
a step closer for you to gain one of the prizes. it also reflect deep
understanding of fundamental analysis on price behavior.
Originality
Try
to move away from the crowd and try avoid using the same rigid language
and vocabulary that most trading participants are using in their
submitted predictions. The capacity to act or think independently and be
original it will make you to differentiate from the crowd and for sure
the other traders will begin notice you thus the odds of receiving more
Likes increase. Based on rules each "like" gives you 1 point. I
value each point received thus I make sure I'm not lazy and try to be
as unique as possible.
Last but not
least you not only must to comply to the FA contest rules but you also
have to understand how the scoring system works in order to increase
your chance of winning the big prize.
The
current formula that use is this: ((Number of Correct
Predictions – Number of Incorrect Predictions-1)/Total Number of
Predictions)*100 + Number of Correct Predictions * 10 + Number of
Incorrect Predictions * (-5).
Based on this formula your change increase
significantly if you try to put your forecast on each event. Even if
you're not sure about the outcome of one event mathematically speaking
your odds increase and get better if you submit your forecast.The odds
on each events are 50/50 either bullish or bearish. The odds never
change, it is always 50/50 because each event is independent of any
other event. Based on rules the influence of correct
predictions is higher than the incorrect prediction and one correct
prediction can erase 2 bad predictions so you better make as many
predictions as possible.
As the FA contest come
near the END keep an eye on what the competition is doing, do the math
by yourself and see what are the odds for you to gain more rank and what
are the odds of your rivals. Here, I can give you as an example my own
strategy and speak about one particular case on the week I won the
contest, which was May, week two. It was Friday, last day of the contest
with just two events left and I was already in the first place. I don't
recall the exact news item but I'm sure both forecasts where to predict
the impact on usdjpy. I only needed one more correct prediction in
order to secure my victory but I've decided not to submit my prediction
for the first event, from the two, betting that the rank nr 2 would have
a lot more pressure on his shoulders and he should not guess right
because of the pressure, and I was right he missed it and I was already
the winner.
Thank you for reading,
Sheriff
