Tell us a little about yourself, how did you get to know about Forex?
Interesting question. I first heard about Forex in about 2000, but was not interested at that time. However, I entered the word "Alpari" from memory into a search engine in April 2004 and entered their forum. I downloaded their terminal - it was МetaТrader 3 at that time - and, just trading with the trend I increased the deposit from $5000 to $21000 on my demo account. This made me interested in Forex. I registered for a training course at Alpari and got some assurance there that one really can earn a living as a Forex trader.

Did you use any mechanical trading systems?
No, ironically, I had never used them on real accounts. I did of course use experts on my demo accounts. Although, I improvised an expert once in order to cancel stops at the opening on a Monday. This happened only once, I was afraid of the gap but did not want to stick at the monitor all the night.

What progress was made using experts on demo accounts?
I ran about 6 experts (created by somebody, not by me) on demo accounts for over half a year. They were profitable on history, but most of them drained off when used online. I had already been rather skeptical about others' experts with optimized inputs before and that case was just the further proof for me.

What is your general opinion about automated trading as a technology and what do you think about its future?
Automated trading is worth attention. However, there are many difficulties to overcome whilst developing one's own experts:

1. one has to try and grasp the market;
2. one has to try and formalize his or her understanding of the market;
3. one has to write the code for back-test algorithm;
4. one has to adjust this algorithm to online trading. Optimization code in Tester is often quite different from that used for online working. Tester conditions are ideal, but life often brings emergencies, like slippage or unforeseen conduct of the expert;
5. but the most difficult thing is to get over the impossibility to make a very profitable expert with minimum risks. So, one has to stop search for the more universal and better algorithm. As one of my trading friends (he trades only with experts) said: "It is better to use on real accounts that what has already proved to work well and then go on searching for the best".
   

Thus, those who trade using experts must have disquisitive powers to formalize trading rules, ability to think logically in order to create programs, as well as a special mental structure. Such an imperturbation. Time usually brings this composure.

What do you think of experts integrated development environment in MetaTrader 4?
Both the environment itself is rather friendly and the language used for writing experts is very powerful. Practically, it allows to implement anything you wish. The language contains methods of enhancement the expert's reliability and stability to the maximum. What hinders my personal transition to fully automated trading is that manual trading can be more profitable.

At the moment, I am trying to develop a semi-automatic trading mode. The expert will monitor open and pending orders, but only human will still open positions.I have manually tested one of my strategies on history, I discovered that it was possible to gain an average of 200 points on EURUSD monthly. Unfortunately, I have not been able to formalize enter rules for the programming language. I hope I will manage to do this in future.

I find it very good that new features gradually appear in МetaТrader 4 and MQL4. For example, I don't think that somebody asked for or expected the Tester visualization, and it is already there, what a surprise! This delivered us from the necessity of writing a special code to analyze the situation on history over time.

What is your opinion about the Automated Trading Championship 2006 that starts on 1st October?
This is very interesting. If I manage to complete my expert in time, I will certainly participate in it. I am in a mad rush at the moment.

After having discussed some topics on your forums, I felt necessity to rub up my 15-year old knowledge of statistics, elements of analysis and physics. Who ever would have thought that I would buy college textbooks and read them instead of fiction! Eventually, I have to stray far afield, "fight on many fronts".

The 3-month long Championship should find the most reliable and stable trading algorithms and deselect the chance-winners. No assurance can be given that experts taken the first three places will be the best ones. But it is highly probable.

As a matter of fact, a trader cannot be totally sure of anything. Furthermore, a "realistic" trading, which is not typical for demo accounts, was promised to participants. It means that experts must be ready for real trading, special mechanisms of ABS and cruise control must be included. This will be a good school, first of all, for the participants themselves.

Do you think the Championship Rules are too hard?
Hard to say. On the one hand, wrong experts will break quicker if the maximum positions are not limited. On the other hand, the chance-winning of the expert that practices the current regularity of the market is highly probable, like "by a lucky train of events".

I think limitations on the volume and on the amount of simultaneously opened orders will not be needless. We can see from the Rules: Experts that are statistically more profitable and can win both in number and by their features are obviously emphasized. This is probably the golden mean.

You are preparing an expert to participate in the Championship. On what principle is it based?
Actually, I am not quite sure that my expert will participate. It's just a skeleton. However, the principle is rather simple: Trading by trend or by pulse. A classic of the genre, however trite it may be. Open only in the pulse direction, but this is the pulse that is still making problems for me. To be honest, I neglected the development of the expert a month ago, but I'll do my best to go on with it. Furthermore, it has not been adapted to work online.

Imagine you have won the first prize. How would you settle it?
Oh, I have never thought of this. I have my own idea of the expert to win in this Championship. It must include 3 to 5 independent experts, which to open rather often. Say, 5 times a week for a currency pair. At that, all experts must be minimally correlated. For example, one is to watch the trend, another one for breaks-though, and one more for rollbacks. And they all must be supervised by another expert that would allow ones to trade and others to "warm the bench" until a more reliable signal occurs. I know that I won't have prepared such an expert by the start of the Championship.

And, of course, the prize winning would help to forget about the necessity to earn money for a certain period of time.

Thank you for the interview, Rashid. I wish you to win in the Championship.