Trading & community hints

This section presents the factors that are taken into consideration while attributing the Dukascopy evaluation points.

Factors included in the automated evaluation:

  1. Share of trades made with conditional orders - Positions opened with pending entry orders are viewed positively as they reflect the forecasting sophistication of the trader, his ability to detect low/high points etc. So does closing positions by SL/TP levels, which adds transparency to trader's actions and allows other traders follow his activities and trading plans.
  2. Maximum % equity drawdown - the less is the maximum equity drawdown a trader has suffered during the month - the better it is for the ranking. This factor is meant to foster reasonable and cautious trading.
  3. Average pips gained on positive positions - the higher is this figure, the more the trader gains on a single position. Not only is this a reflection of his trading effectiveness, it also is a sign that he favours 'long', grounded trades.
  4. Average pips lost on negative positions - a function of trader's risk management (when viewed together with the average gain per position).
  5. Win/Loss ratio - number of Positive closed positions / number of Negative closed positions.

    6. Subjective criteria for extra bonus points:

    1. Meaningful, interesting blogs - we put value on trading activities' justification. Experts may award extra points for justified trading (comments to trades), informative, interesting blogs.
    2. Other factors - in special cases Dukascopy leaves the right to attribute points for some factors that it found outstanding in the activity of the trader. This relates to trading behavior, general activity in the contest etc.

    We encourage all traders aspiring to end up the month in winning positions to grasp this information and adhere to it in their trading.


    Popularity hints

    Users may take advantage of some activities leading to the improvement of their popularity rating. Especially, with respect to unique visits:

    • Post links to the profile page on external resources - every unique IP visit to your profile page will add you 1 point. Even links posted during past contests will continue bringing you new visits for the current contest.
    • Share your profile on Facebook/Twitter - use the built-in sharing buttons to generate visits to your profile page from your social network.
    • Keep using the same community account - Using the same community account for various consecutive contests not only allows tracking your participation history, it also ensures that people visiting your profile page via previously posted links will add up to your current popularity.

    The results of the contest's monitoring gave us insight on what are the most common rule breaches or circumventions contestants are trying to turn to. To avoid committing those, we are providing a list of those violations that we are going to reprimand when making the final evaluation of the contestants.

  6. Multiple registrations - when one person creates different accounts with different login data (can be tracked via IPs, account information etc.)
  7. Self-voting and self-commenting - leaving comments from trader's own accounts (tracked by IP etc.)
  8. Continuous posting of poor-sensed, go-around comments - please see the FAQ on the comments content
  9. Violations of limitations on orders - disrespect of the 10 pips and 2% rules on orders.

Dukascopy reminds that it tracks all the IP activity of the participants as well as thoroughly monitors the activity in the contest with a view to detect cheating and standings manipulation. Unless considered severe, Dukascopy does not take actions when the above mentioned cheating is detected. However, this information is registered and will be accounted for when making the final evaluation of the traders and deciding on the final positions on the winners' list.