I would like to start by thanking Dukascopy because of its efforts in trying to remove Popularity Points Manipulation from the Strategy Contest. It is a good signal about its efforts in increase the
reputation of this contest.


There are however still few things where Dukascopy could improve, or at least help clarifying the meaning of few of its own rules.



Conflict 1: Misuse of non enforced Rules

Strategy Disclosure Rule
"At his own discretion, the author of a strategy has the right to disclose the code script on the personal blog in order to achieve higher popularity in the contest."

This means that copycat participants, according to the rules, are not allowed to get any popularity points by sharing a strategy of another participant.
Or, can Dukascopy explain its interpretation of its own rule?, or a reason for not enforcing it? All copy players have the full 35 bonus points.



Conflict 2: Registration of persons that are directly or indirectly related to other Participant

This Rule is difficult to understand in the way it is written.
Can Dukascopy clarify what does this rule mean? In this contest it is evident that about half of the participants are related to other participants. Friends that participate because of their friends are participating. Is that forbidden?
Shall 50% of all participants stop joining future contests because they are directly or indirectly related to other participants? Or is this rule about avoiding Team Tactics (friends giving popularity points to each other)? The way it is written, i dont know.
Can Dukascopy clarify that rule? Thanks!



Conflict 3: "Other activities used to get an unfair advantage over other Participants"

A clear example is to upload strategies from past winners instead of developing an own. A non developer has a clear unfair advantage over developers
because non-developers upload only the most successful strategies.

Developers, on the other hand, by learning JForex, make simple strategies, which make too few or too many trades, with too much risk or too little, putting statistics against them.
As a result, 80% of developers have less possibilities to win than non-developers.

As a result of this, the Strategy Contest month after month, loses developers, which are replaced by copycat players.

Could Dukascopy clarify this issue? At least i dont understand in which way Dukascopy benefits in having tens of players who participate every month for over a year,
who have no interest in learning JForex/Java, that they just use this contest as a monthly opportunity to get some cash, while putting 0 effort.
There are a few copycat players in the top 10 this month (as in every other month), and so far this seems to be an activity promoted by Dukascopy.


Thanks in advance for your clarifications!

Fully agree with the guest that Dukascopy should explain to all of these rules. Thank you guest (I would like to know the name) for such a good statement of fact.

Best regards,
Egidijus

Good logics and excellent questions for DUKASCOPY. If dukascopy is serious then must explain...it. This is no single user question but also every original strategy maker and who is serious for this contest.

Yes, there are many interesting things....

eg. why not disqualified Otaniemi and Cesar, as brothers??

See by Cesar in viewtopic.php?p=54081#p54081 :
"I am a software developer, and my brother (https://www.dukascopy.com/tradercontest/ ... r=Otaniemi) as well."

eg. why not disqualified gorozcoh, because obviously violate rules???

etc. etc. etc............

Regards Kelvinmaster

I can not answer that, but the day the new rules came, I made a deal with my brother so that only one of us participates until rules get clarified. Then I stopped trading beginning of this month so that Dukas wouldnt feel tempted to disqualify both of us for being brothers. Next month, if rule is still in place, I will participate and Otaniemi wont. I am also porting a newer strategy to Metatrader, so that I might move there, as participating every second month is quite silly.

About Gorozcoh, it is clear he is already disqualified. He will just be removed at the end of the month, same that happened last month. I dont think it matters if he wants to keep spending his time creating new users for self commenting all his trades.

Cesar

Another copytrader from December: Ritesh. He uploaded Cesar strategy

Dear Guest: For your information, the Copyright was still intact in the code, so it's legal to modify/reuse the code. Plus, I made the code public so that no one including yourself assumes that Ritesh has some great strategy and original developer is credited. I am trying to learn the jforex coding since I got Live account with dukascopy, however I'm facing difficulties in successfully compiling/translating the JForex code from my existing MT4 setup. Now why would I spend time on coding something already working on another platform, when the JForex compiler is not successfully working for it's existing winning strategies. I mean, check out my strategy contest participation in past months, and it all says that none of the strategy got compiled successfully. Plus I really need an offline compiler of the JForex platform (and I assume you'd not help me this case). It's great to see that the only strategy which got successfully compiled after 4-5 months, out of more than 7-8 strategies I tried to compile placed me on top 10 ranks. I'm feeling lucky and motivated to program my MT4 setup for JForex somehow.

On top of that, no one here is inventing anything new so no need to worry with sleepless nights. It's just the combination/confluence of technical indicators and parameters that makes your strategy successful or okay or bad. Code re-usability is the basis of software industry.

There is nothing illegal in Ritesh (or many other participants this and every other month) to upload strategies that they did not write. They are the target group for this Contest. Month after month Dukas has always rewarded non programmers that end in the top 10 in the programmers contest.

Dukas intention has never been to become a Respected Programmers Contest, as their rules are targeted to attract non programmers (by allowing them to participate with 0 effort, with more chances to win than programmers of their own strategies), and at the same time, their rules try to discourage participation of programmers (they need to spend hours writing strategies, and then they are forced to publish their code for free so that non programmers can upload the most sucessfull ones).
Dukas intention is to make their programmers contest a Respected Popularity Contest with mass participation. Programmer or non programmer is irrelevant, as long as the Popularity rules are not broken.

Dont expect Dukas to reply to this thread with that clarity. Their silence for the questions asked at the beginning of this thread is enough confirmation for the goals of their programmers contest.

These limitations are linked to the unavailability to track changes in the strategy source code. If a strategy is created and then copied and modified by other participants, then who is the real author of the strategy? The answer to the question is not simple. We just don't have a technology to monitor who is the real author of the strategy. And our decisions can't be based on your emails or complains that someone has copied someone else strategy.

If you do not wish your strategy be copied, then simply don't disclose the source code. If you have disclosed the strategy, you are no longer considered the author of the strategy and the strategy belongs to the general public. Everyone is free to copy and use it.




This rule should be very strict. By participating with 2 accounts, the chances to succeed in the contest increase significantly. However, the rules are indeed not so simple and straight. Lets say, if you're going to share the award with your friend, then this is a clear manipulation. If you're participating independently from each other, the accounts are not considered "linked". However, this is not a rule but a simple explanation for you.




Some changes to the contest rules are under-way. We are currently preparing a new platform that helps to develop the strategies and the rules might be updated right after the release. Stay tuned!

We have agreed with both of them that only 1 account is used from now on.

Finally lots of answers to my questions. Thanks Dukascopy!

About the copycats, you probably overestimate many participants. Complaints are most of the time for participants that dont change anything at all (as an example, Ritesh, top 3 this month, or flyswing, top 6 last month), therefore, there is 0 code that belongs to them, however bonus points are rewarded to them. But lets forget by now about that.

Complaints about rules discouraging developers to compete in this contest is not about nagging, or deciding to not share source code. There is a strong and clear benefit for Dukascopy itself. If a developer decides to follow last Dukascopy advise ("if you dont like copycats, dont share your code"), the impact goes to Dukascopy reputation as a platform that can be used for professional trading.

Without attracting the top developers to the strategy contest, investors taking a look at JForex will see that it only runs lots of crash and burn trend followers, and even worse, by opening the winner strategies, they will see that many of those are 100% identical. Not the impression of a Highly Respected Automated Strategy Competition, dont you agree?


"and the rules might be updated right after the release. Stay tuned!"
I will. Hopefully the new rules will encourage developers to put effort in writing better strategies. I must say that current rules, together with the "if you dont like copycats, dont share your code. If you share your code you are not anymore the author of the strategy", kills my motivation to spend any time writing innovative strategies. I might end up following Dukascopy advise and join the copycat traders army.

Thanks Dukascopy for the explanation.

I wanted to develop some kind of stable profitable strategy in the contest. But it seems that this is not worth doing, because I will not even be viewed as its author, if I am going to reveal the code.

After such an explanation, I think, that contest can only be used for win cash money. And for this there is already quite a periodically profitable strategies, from which lacks choose one, it optimize - and you are already in the top 10! Probably in the future and will have to do. And develop stably profitable strategy will have in the Live account.

Regards,
Egidijus

Well, this is interesting topic. I never noticed these "copycat" things in a contest, because my strategy wasn't interesting to anyone as it always was a medium performer. Anyway people started to notice that my strategy is stable at some point and now I see one user using my 99% copied strategy. He increased lot size. And that's it. Annoying thing about this is that I am using fewer lots, so it means that if my strategy would generate 100% profitable trades during contest month, me and copycat user would get the same points for the pips, but copycat would get more points for equity. I do not want to use max lots, because I want my strategy to be stable and avoid margin cut. So luck can make copycat a winner. But in Forex trading we don't need luck. We all know that to develop a stable strategy (on monthly basis) is a challenge - most strategies are profitable only in certain type of market. And if a strategy catches "big move" its profits are huge. So my question - what would happen if during one month contest there will be only 1 creator ant 9 copycats in top 10?
It's interesting if such users are useful for Dukascopy. I do not know Dukascopy objective of this contest, so I do not know if copycat's are useful.
Anyway using copied strategy shows that a user is PATHETIC. I would never do that even if rules allows it. I believe that this can be a reference to a "Fair play".
I would suggest for programmers and creators to add some "bombs" into code. This will filter out at least those who just copy and are too stupid to learn coding. I think AbdulQadeer or whoever he is tried to protect his strategy. And I think he did well. I have an idea about one "bomb". If anybody else knows any ideas, please write me PM.
P.S. it would be interesting to find out how Cesar feels after his given strategy performs better than the one that he uses

I agree with all developers opinion, that current rules and Dukascopy policy do welcome copycats, but do not welcome developers.
I dont dislike copycat players though. I am sure Ritesh and Flyswing are great guys. They are just playing with the rules, which favour copycats. I would do the same.

Dukascopy should value this opportunity to get valuable feedback which there is a lot in this thread. No need to hire a consultant for getting this level of expert advice.

Dukascopy does have a great platform, which right now is used far below its possibilities. This happens because management right now favours the number of submitted strategies (number of participants), instead of the quality of those.

This is the identical strategy that Nokia used with Symbian for competing against Android.
Nokia piled tens of thousands of free applications in OviStore within a year.
How they did it?
Monthly contests for developers in every country. Winners selected from everybody who uploaded a free application for Symbian.
How did they get so many developers?
They didnt.
Nokia created a Wizard so that with just few clicks, and adding some text for the content (which mostly came from Wikipedia),
any 13 years old could create an application within an hour and have it published in OviStore.

Having tens of thousands of lame applications did not increase Symbian popularity. It backfired, and people saw Symbian as a lousy operating system (which was not).

A GREAT application is worth thousands of lame applications, even if those are free. Nokia CEO got fired, and the new CEO killed Symbian, not because it was a bad platform, but only because customers perceived it as a bad platform.

Having 20 Innovative Strategies brings a lot more reputation to a contest than having 200 lame strategies.
Will Dukas be able to Understand it and Take Action before all the good jforex software developers leave?


Unless there is a substancial change in the rules, my current plans are to join that copycat players army.
Luckily the strategy I use now is based on matrices that wear off very quickly. Those are created out of backtest data, which if not updated every month, become obsolete. Matrices cant be updated, as only half of the algo is published. The other half is what creates those matrices.

Then JForex will continue its path to become a huge pile of simple mono-currency, heavily pirated, win or crash strategies that will bring nothing more than a smile to the investor browsing what can be achieved with JForex.


Cesar

Honestly compared to the time i have spent writing the strategies, learning Jforex and the amount of cash prizes i have been earning it's time well spent, and same can be said to all the guys that have finished in the top10.

Obviously if you have a very profitable strategy you might not want to share it there (if such strategy exist ,-))

There are pros and cons to the sharing side of strategy, at the beginning i was well against now i don't really care anymore. It's quite interesting to be able to download strategies, for instance i will probably download Adask Asian robot soon to check it out.

I just think it would be more fun if developpers were in some way forced to create something new after they have won something, this would also work for clones as they wouldnt be able to copy a strategy and use it 10 times in a row.

I agree to Cesar. It would be better if there would be more different strategies in a contest. What I want from a contest is to have opportunity to check and test many different strategies. And maybe from the best ones make a "super strategy" as Stroegeorge want's to do. I'm not sure if it's a great idea, but it's possible that it will work. I haven't found many good strategies and not a single very good in this contest. So I always hope for a new ones to come out. I have found that only these users strategies are worth checking - egidijus, plskyline, schnitzel. That's it. Other's are just "gamble and catch a good month" strategies. Or just haven't proved being worth spending time.

Now about copycats - I would welcome someone to download my strategy test it and improve it. This would be a win win situation. But I do not call lot increase as improvement .

I found strategy contest very useful not only because of prizes, but also a possibility to test strategies. So it would be great if Dukascopy would allow to run more than one strategy.

Also new year is coming. So I would suggest Dukascopy to establish "Top 10 best strategies of the year" contest. Prizes would be awarded not only every month, but also once per year. This would make contestants to build more stable strategies and stay with Dukascopy for a long time.

My two cents:

When I joined I didn't know how to write strategies (well even now) and learned thru the process. But never copied any strat. Always it was my own. Since, it was not really perfirming well in the given month, there were takers from the copy cats.

People copying may have their own compulsions, time restrictions, lack of knowledge, need forprize money et al. But can anybody stop anybody copying.. The answer is NO.

Then how do you distinguish between copied and the original (atleast within this dukas forum). There are thousands of codes and help available across the web in various forums. Not necessarily in Java. But in C or in MQ.

My suggestion to Dukas:
1> Give bonus points to those strategies which are new in the contest MONTH:
1-a> this can happen by end of month, by then other users will take initiative to identify.
1-b> give negative bonus points for the copied strategies, if not modified even for 1%.
1-c> points could be such that, it does not eliminate them from top20 (repeat 20) but keep them out from say top3. So that the spirit of the contest is still maintained.
1-d> This way, this will encourage to create their own.

My suggestion to the participants:
1> There are 100s and thousands of strats available in the web in diff formats. Do some research and take the key points and use the Dukas forum, contest support and wiki to develop one of your own.
2>Be creative, post your queries inthe forum, you will get suggestions and direction.
This will help you feel accomplished.

Adask here me too much praise. I with such an attitude to the developers will not give here my stable strategy. I'm here to develop new ones. And it is not until the end. Finish on real account.

This contest is really a lot of help in the development of programming in the jForex platform. Analyzing other strategies come good ideas for your own strategy. But all the same I'm for that, not to clone the strategy. Without developers, contest quickly die. The participants can take any strategy for the foundation, but it is necessary to make significant changes to these strategies, that the contest was developed further. Of course, it is difficult to determine what is a "significant change", but I think that this is possible.

Now here are a few good strategies, from which you can make a stable earning strategy. The authors of these strategies I do not say, for obvious reasons. There is one sustainable strategy. I think that the developers themselves can find these strategies. For others, it is not going to declare.

I agree with all offers of developers in this topic and I think that Dukascopy should take them into account.

Regards,
Egidijus

Unfortunately, it's not possible to automate this process. We don't know if the strategy was copied or not. At the moment, there are amount 1000 version of various strategies.

As everybody is signing with their real nicknames, then i will not sign as Guest this time.

I will also offer Dukascopy few ideas which i think could help them revert the difficult situation right now, and end up with a Strategy Contest that promotes innovation, where every month there are better strategies competing (instead of only changing the name or the lot size)
and where participants do not feel betrayed by Dukas (which is the cause of the current low level of motivation and the low effort in writing better strategies)

Dukascopy, please evaluate the cost benefit of this improved rules, and if you consider JForex benefits from it, no need to pay me royalties feel free to approve and enforce them.

Rule 1) Reward the most innovative strategies. This requires that manually the strategies from the top 10 are quickly browsed and the most innovative strategy is rewarded, with money (eg. +1k) or bonus points (eg: +20 bonus points). Innovation criteria shall be set (i can also recommend something if you prefer)

Rule 2) Set a limit of max lot size to 5 million units and increase the minimum amount of trades per month to 30.
This will reduce substantially the win or crash strategies.
Lets face it. Professional manual traders open over 100 trades per month.
Professional automated traders open over 100 trades per day. Asking only 10 trades per month all that it does is to put the 10 luckiest in the top 10.
To assign the Dukascopy points only to participants who fulfill this rule will encourage better quality of strategies.

Rule 3) Allow up to 2 simultaneous positions. This will encourage improvements of strategies to use 2 currencies simultaneously or at least the use of hedging.

Rule 4) As Dukas is now a promoter of innovation in JForex, it shall penalize the most simple strategy from the top 10. As the top 10 strategies needs to be quickly reviewed (rule 1),
the strategy that got to the top 10 with lowest quality, shall be penalized with 0 bonus points from sharing the strategy (as that strategy brings no value to Dukascopy)


And finally the most important rule of all. The Golden rule of the Strategy Contest:

Rule 5) Ban participation of copycats. This is a programmers contest. It is sad that this needs to be pointed out, but
NO CONTEST SHOULD REWARD PLAGIARISM. That destroys contest reputation, kills innovation and alienates developers against Dukascopy.
Plagiarism is currently institutionalized in this contest due to constant confirmation by Dukascopy that plagiarism does not break any rule (!?!?!?!?!?!?!?)
This task is easily achievable. Participants already detect every month who are the copycats from the top 10. Dukas needs 1 minute to corroborate (run a diff).
Excuses (like Dukas last post) gives the impression of there is no interest on banning Plagiarism, there is just the intention of trying to calm down the waters by trying one or two excuses from time to time, without changing anything.

Detecting plagiarism is not a new problem. Any school teacher does that. There are tons of automated freeware software than runs on windows that will tell you in minutes which are the copycats.
There are also libraries in any language (also in Java) where you feed 2 files and tell you how similar those files are.

Detecting Software Source Code Plagiarism is a widely known task (used by eg: software teachers). There are programs specialized in detecting plagiarism of software written in Java. Exactly what Dukas wants.

Capability to detect Plagiarism is a basic part of the framework needed to run a contest like this (or to be a computer science teacher).
If your IT department works with Agile, create a user story and assign it to them. They will build the infrastructure within days. I could even write the specs myself and send those to you. I wouldnt implement it though, as i charge too much per hour


Otaniemi