I was kicked out of the championship in an unfair way, anyone with similar experience?

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I chose to prepare a higher frequency EA for this year championship as such robots show better statistical behavior, i. e. their performance is similar in different time intervals and should be similar also in future. As I was, of course, aware of the scalping ban (rule III.7) I really tried hard not to break it. I implemented an extra code into my EA to carefully watch the distribution of profit in a pip scale. Then, in every optimization I only chose the settings that lead to sufficiently high average profit and the least number of trades with profit smaller than 4 pips.  The strategy is based on entries and exits outside a trading channel which is calculated from fast moving averages. Take profit is set to 100 pips and is almost never hit because the positions are closed based on technical levels (channel crossing). The average profit is in consequence strictly dependent on the channel width, which is dependent on market volatility. There are filters implemented in the EA to ensure that only if the volatility is sufficient, trades are performed. It trades EURUSD and switches between m1,m2 and m3 time frames, depending on market conditions. In the backtest, the average profit is 7.3 pips and there is only very small fraction of trades with profit within spread range. The number of trades performed is pretty high - about 2000 per month, but it is no extreme value. Everything looked fine, automated testing was without errors, always finished in about 2 minutes, so my EA is very efficient in hardware usage. And then, 2 days before the contest start, I receieved this message from Mr. Starikov: "Your participation in the Championship is denied in accordance with p. III.7 of the Rules (never use scalping)." I wrote to him that it must be a mistake as I am sure that my EA does not break the III.7 rule. He gave me no answer, no explanation, nothing. I am out. In the rules it is stated that scalping behavior, in terms of profit taking within spread range, will be assessed AFTER THE CONTEST IS FINISHED. So it is clear that they prevented my contest participation in a totally unfair and unjustified way. There were some guys with similar experience last year. Is there anyone treated in this way this year?
 

The same happened to me. Their answer was: "too short position time." That's it! 

 
balazs321:

The same happened to me. Their answer was: "too short position time." That's it! 

That's incredible! Why do they do this? I would understand if the reason was possible hardware or trading server overload, but that is not the case. It looks like they apply some ideological criteria. They, for unknown reason, stick to the idea that high frequency trading is an "incorrect style" and if Mr. Starikov has a feeling that your style is similar to scalping - based on number of trades, position time etc., but without any objective assessment, he simply kicks you out without explanation.
 

forex4any1.com:
That's incredible! Why do they do this? I would understand if the reason was possible hardware or trading server overload, but that is not the case. It looks like they apply some ideological criteria. They, for unknown reason, stick to the idea that high frequency trading is an "incorrect style" and if Mr. Starikov has a feeling that your style is similar to scalping - based on number of trades, position time etc., but without any objective assessment, he simply kicks you out without explanation.

We have checked your EA manually with tester visualization. Much more than 25% of trades have profit in spread range. And too short position life. Ie scalping.

High frequency trading in fact is trading strategy near cheating. High frequency trading based on nearess trading server from trading robot. Robot gets quotes from server on some milliseconds earlier than other robots.

Your strategy is not high frequency trading (these are attractive words only) just simple scalping. Sorry for understunding

PS We can "decline a Participant in registration without an explanation" before Championship started - p II.8 of Rules 

The Rules of Automated Trading Championship 2011
  • championship.mql5.com
The Rules of Automated Trading Championship 2011
 
stringo:

We have checked your EA manually with tester visualization. Much more than 25% of trades have profit in spread range. And too short position life. Ie scalping.

High frequency trading in fact is trading strategy near cheating. High frequency trading based on nearess trading server from trading robot. Robot gets quotes from server on some milliseconds earlier than other robots.

Your strategy is not high frequency trading (these are attractive words only) just simple scalping. Sorry for understunding

PS We can "decline a Participant in registration without an explanation" before Championship started - p II.8 of Rules 

I used the term "high frequency trading" just to describe my EA as performing much larger number of trades than the average participant. But I agree that it is used for something else and I should have used different words. Well, to finally clarify my problem, what is "spread range" in your view? In your terminal, the spread on  EURUSD fluctuates in the range 0.8-2.0 pips, with 1.4 in average. This is the profit distribution of my EA in the 2011.01.01-2011.08.01 backtest:

trades with profit 0-1 pips: 76 (1.1%)
trades with profit 1-2 pips: 127 (1.9%)
trades with profit 2-3 pips: 242 (3.5%)
trades with profit 3-4 pips: 787 (11.5%)
trades with profit 4+  pips: 5594 (82.0%)


Everyone can figure out whether "much more than 25% of trades have profit in spread range".

 

There's no point in complaining here. They are the organizers, you just have to accept their decision. Participation in the championship is not a legal right, but just an opportunity. They can deny anyone from participating without the need of any explanation. This is not a chess game, there are no strict rules.

It was a lesson for me, next year I will be more conscious about this issue. I advice you the same. 

 
balazs321:

There's no point in complaining here. They are the organizers, you just have to accept their decision. Participation in the championship is not a legal right, but just an opportunity. They can deny anyone from participating without the need of any explanation. This is not a chess game, there are no strict rules.

It was a lesson for me, next year I will be more conscious about this issue. I advice you the same. 

It was a lesson for me too. I will focus my effort on live trading and will not lose hundreds of hours to shape my robot to fit their weird written and hidden rules. I otherwise really appreciate Metatrader5 and MQL5, Metaquotes did a great job and it is a pity I suffered such disappointment here.
 
forex4any1.com:
It was a lesson for me too. I will focus my effort on live trading and will not lose hundreds of hours to shape my robot to fit their weird written and hidden rules.
That's the right attitude! Btw, how much profit was your EA making during the testing period?
 
balazs321:
That's the right attitude! Btw, how much profit was your EA making during the testing period?
Approx. 900 000 with a very smooth equity curve, almost negligible drawdowns. What I regard my best achievement is that if I run another backtest on a time interval that it has never seen before, like 2010 (I mean the optimization) it performs essentially the same. What about your EA?
 

~1.5 million from 01.01.11 to 01.08.11. It is based on ticks and as in the tester the ticks are simulated, I do not consider this result as a surely achievable one in reality, but I think it is still impressive. Real market conditions are a bit different, but now it seems to be working in the short time, a longer period is needed to see whether it is really great or not.

I also tested my strategy from 2009 and it does not wipe out the account and gives great profit. It makes thousands of trades, SL is 4 points, TP is 15-25 and the entry points are us decided on statistical analysis of a couple hundred ticks preceding. Knowing the fact that your EA was also highly profitable, strengthens my suspicion that MetaQuotes was filtering out the "best" EAs from the championship. But who cares by now, I am concentrating on adjusting my strategy to real conditions and bringig peace to the world...Haha, that last one is certainly not true :)

 
balazs321:

There's no point in complaining here. They are the organizers, you just have to accept their decision. Participation in the championship is not a legal right, but just an opportunity. They can deny anyone from participating without the need of any explanation. This is not a chess game, there are no strict rules.

It was a lesson for me, next year I will be more conscious about this issue. I advice you the same. 

Actually, that's not completely true. ATC 2011 is a contest with real money prizes and should comply with the respective laws of the country where organizer (MetaQuotes) is registered. As far as I know, that's Bahamas. Not sure about their laws regarding contests with money prizes.
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