The first annual Automated Trading Championship 2006 comes to the end. We take this opportunity of thank our co-sponsors - Spacevision Switzerland SA, FXDD, and Interbank FX LLC. It would be impossible to run a competition at such a level without their support.

A great amount of work has been done within the last 6 months and the results of the competition are more than impressive. 258 developers from all over the world have taken part in it. This is an unique and very important event. No such events have taken place yet.

Now we can give some preliminary results of the Championship. 27 Participants have been disqualified for different reasons during the competition. 11 other Participants (of 231) have not made any trade. Thus, as much as 14% of Participants did not struggle for the prize places.

Only 44 of the resting 220 Expert Advisors have turned to be profitable and managed to increase their initial deposits. This makes 20%. So only every fifth Expert has turned to be more or less profitable! Such a low percentage, along with the amount of excluded Experts, proves that automated trading is an infant industry. However, even these results disprove the idea prevailing before the Championship about that automated trading systems cannot trade independently. Though profitable Expert Advisors make only 20% and this is really not enough, they can earn money absolutely by themselves.

Openness of the Championship is very important, too. It allowed the first ever public analysis of multiple trading strategies under different conditions and from different points of view. For the first time, it became possible to both analyze many trading strategies simultaneously and compare their results "on the same track". It is the first time when Experts using different analytical tools, different money management systems, having different risk and stability levels met each other.

Participants shared their opinions about development of automated trading systems in their comments, interviews and on forums during the Championship. They explained why they had chosen one or another solution, one or another trading strategy. At the same time, it was possible to study how successful particular approaches to the Expert Advisors' development had been.

All that information went public and helped to understand how successful and not very successful systems are developed. The openness of the Championship allowed to decide which of trading strategies were very profitable on short terms and which were on long terms.

The Championship has given fertile ground for statistical researches. These researches have allowed analyses such Expert Advisors' characteristics as profitability, reliability, risk level, as well as comparison thereof with the trade results.

The Championship has shown what problems the Experts can face when trading in real. Unfortunately, realizations of even very effective strategies have often left much to be desired. It is this reason, for which some Experts could not take better places. On the other hand, some less effective but better realized Expert Advisors have managed the independency problems and taken rather fair places. Such results are helpful, too: The most of developers do not possess independent-Expert developing culture. However, active discussions about some problematic points have shown that the developers start to understand how it is important not to neglect "little things" in programming of automated trading systems. We hope that all this information will be very helpful for everybody and that more stable Expert Advisors of higher quality in future.

Summarizing the Championship results and with hindsight of the work done, we would like to note that the Championship has been one of the most important events of this year. It first allowed to assemble hundreds of Expert Advisors on one track and to analyze them under working conditions in an unbiased manner. A large base of very helpful data is a result of the Championship, as well. After the Championship is over, a special research devoted to the independent work of Expert Advisors will be conducted and published. We hope this information will be helpful for those who have any relation to automated trading.

To this end, we would like to thank all Sponsors and Participants of the Automated Trading Championship 2006. Considering the great importance of this competition for automated trading as an industry, we would also like to return that this Championship will be an annual event. So we use this opportunity to invite all comers to participate in the Automated Trading Championship 2007!