Please could you consider removing this feature once a strategy has opened at least one trade? At the moment it's open to abuse and has indeed been abused this month already.

e.g. Strategy gambles huge volumes (up to 8M usd) in the first few days to reach ~250,000. Then the strategy gets resubmitted with 'bug fixes' that changes the volume used to a small volume (1.5M or so) that no longer uses equity targets.

The strategy I'm referring to already had an equity hibernation built into it on the first version (a very deliberate one ). It would reduce the volumes used once it reached a certain equity. It then required the resubmit because left unchecked it could have eventually backfired. If the current version had been running from the start, the strategy's equity would be vastly different.

I have every confidence that you'd disqualify strategies like this after the competition. However removing this feature would stop us from having to see such rule breaking during the competition month.

Oh also the strategy in question had at least one other clone with slightly different parameters to increase the chances of reaching the equity target. The clone currently has the lowest equity in the competition while the other has the highest. The author didn't feel that the clone was worthy of his 'bug fixes' yet.

Hi,

-----
Programming Rules:
3. Dukascopy expects Participants to adhere to the following list of recommendations:
c) "It is strongly prohibited to set any equity targets and switch the strategy into "hibernate mode""
-----


I agree i calculated the volume with a decreasing factor as the balance increased:

riskStep = Math.sin( 3.1416/2 * (1 - (CurrentBalance/StartEquity) / 7.0) );

I used as an example an online tutorial (as this is my first run into this contest)
https://www.quantisan.com/sixth-place-fi ... y-contest/
, which uses following:

riskPct = -2.88462e-10 * x * x - 0.000156731 * x + 38.5577;


I am new here, so this might have been explained in some forum already, but to my understanding, going to Hibernation after certain balance is reached is different than reducing the risk as balance keeps increasing.

If Dukascopy would really want to have such rule, they should re-write it as:
"It is strongly mandatory to use the same risk factor during the whole competition".


"> Oh also the strategy in question had at least one other clone "
I am a software developer, and my brother (https://www.dukascopy.com/tradercontest/ ... r=Otaniemi) as well.

We developed our strategy together, although only the core. The backtesting and finetuning is different, then his forecast, stop loss, take profit, etc. are different (although not too different, as we both follow the main long term trend in USDCHF).

I am sure there are plenty of people using copy/paste Strategies (Dukascopy promotes it by making strategies available to all). This is not even copy/paste. It is a 2 persons software project (with different SVN branches and same trunk). Where i work, we are 150 software developers working for the same project. Nothing illegal in that.

Anyway, i just called him so that he can remove that risk factor.


I would also like to know from Dukascopy if my
riskStep = Math.sin( 3.1416/2 * (1 - (CurrentBalance/StartEquity) / 7.0) );
was ilegal, and if so, why are there online tutorials from winners of the Strategy Contest, promoting the use of such Risk Factors.


Anyway, I am Ok if Dukascopy decides to remove me from this months list. It is not my intention to get unfair advantage. My strategy is sound, and i dont need to break any rule for getting into the top 10.

then Cesar should be disqualified.

The example you linked is over a year old, for all I know the hibernating rule wasn't even around then. Even if it was it's no excuse for breaking it now.

As far as the definition of hibernation is concerned, well if a strategy were to start opening at 0.001M for example, it might as well have not bothered to open a trade at all. Where do you draw the line? In your case you've changed it from 8M max -> 1.5M. Why do you think they made that rule, and do you really think that what you've done is in the spirit of that rule?

You mentioned forecast.. *sigh*. Now I have to refer to another rule that's passed you by: "3b. It is strongly discouraged to include built-in forecasts, hardcoded prices targets.". Your strategy was designed to take advantage of the very specific USDCHF move. Your brother's parameters got the length of the move wrong, but yours was correct and long enough to reach your equity target before you slam the brakes on the position size.

Ah well, maybe you just weren't aware of these rules and I suspect that's the case. At least you know for next month.