The eighth week of the Automated Trading Championship 2006 is over. Two thirds of the time provided for the competition. At the end of the previous week, the structure of the Top Ten changed significantly. However, leaders of the past weeks - ldamiani and Hendrick - managed to hold their positions.

Expert Advisor GUMASA by Luis Damiani (ldamiani) from Brazil remains on the first place. Although its equity and deposit have slightly reduced as a result of some losing trades, but it is still the first. 28 thousand and the first place. Excellent, Luis!

Within the last 5 days, Harry Brinkhuis (Hendrick) from the Netherlands has not managed to out-distance Luis. His Expert Advisor Phoenix has also suffered losses during the eighth week. However, these losses turned to be a bit smaller than those of Expert Advisor GUMASA. Due to this, the gap between two leaders became smaller. Now Harry's Expert Advisor has more chances to catch the Luis's Expert up. So, 26 thousand belong to Harry. Very good!

This week turned to be very successful for Vince Wells (Vdiddi38). After the outage of a server, his Expert Advisor left the Top Ten of the Championship. Many had already forgotten about him when he reminded of himself by his triumphal return to the third place. His score as of the end of the eighth week is 23.4 thousand dollars. We heartily congratulate Vince on his triumph and wish him lots of luck in the future!

Due to serious fluctuation in the USD exchange rate at the end of the week, many Participants did not manage to hold their positions in the Top Ten. Expert Advisors named Aver and Via left the Top Ten. Their places were taken by riskier Expert Advisors. For example, rfiche from Brazil has had 12 thousand in open positions as of the end of the week.

During the last two weeks, Luis and Harry, as the Championship leaders, held their pursuers at a safe distance of 10 thousand dollars. According to the eighth week's results, this distance has sharply fallen. Vince Wells is close on the heels of the leaders. He needs to earn just about three thousand to catch Harry Brinkhuis up. Struggle for the first places seems to have made a fresh start!

Unfortunately, the most popular Participant of the Championship, Sashken, has closed his only position with a large loss of 26.9 thousand dollars by the Margin Call. His equity is now just 2 735 dollars. Most likely, we will not see those impressing results that Alexander's Expert Advisor showed the preceding weeks.

Top Ten of the Eighth Week:

Total equity of the Top Ten Expert Advisors has increased by 8 thousand within this week. This summarized index is equal to 105 thousand now. This happened due to new Participants in the Top Ten that had managed to reduce the gap between the leaders and the 'basic group'. The struggle among the Top Ten Expert Advisors becomes more intensive. We will wait for the next week's results impatiently!