Rules Automated Trading Championship 2006

I. General Provisions

  1. The Championship is organized by MetaQuotes Software Corp.
  2. The Championship is sponsored by:
  3. The Championship starts on the 1st October 2006 finishing on the 25th December 2006.
  4. Registration starts on the 1st August 2006 finishing on the 25th September 2006.
  5. Prizes of totaling $80 000 are distributed among:
    • First Place - $40 000
    • Second Place - $25 000
    • Third Place - $15 000
  6. The Organizer provides server equipment on which the Participants' Expert Advisors will continuously work throughout the Championship.
  7. All Participant operations will only be performed with virtual money.
  8. Participation in the Championship is free.

II. Participants

  1. Anybody aged 18 or over is eligible to participate in the Championship, irrespective of occupation, citizenship or gender.
  2. No former or actual staff members of companies that organize or sponsor the Championship, or their family members or relatives, are eligible to participate.
  3. Everybody who wants to participate in the Championship must be registered.
  4. The Participant agrees and undertakes to provide true information about himself or herself at registration.
  5. The Participant can be registered only once within the Championship.
  6. The attempts of multiple registrations or use of anonymous proxies will result in unambiguous disqualification of the Participant.
  7. The Participant agrees not to raise any financial or other claims against the Organizer or the Sponsors.
  8. Organizers reserve the right to refuse registration to a Participant without showing the cause and to disqualify him/her showing the cause.
  9. Having registered for participation in the Championship, each Participant expresses hereby his/her full agreement with these Rules without any exceptions or limitations.

III. Eligible Expert Advisors' Programs

  1. Programs can be accepted both as compiled *.EX4 files and as source codes *.MQ4. DLLs are forbidden.
  2. The following can be used:
    • one expert (to be placed into the /experts directory)
    • one data file (to be placed into the /experts/files directory) in any format except for executable one
    • up to 5 custom indicators (to be placed into the /experts/indicators directory); there are no limitations to use indicators integrated in the terminal
    • up to 5 libraries (to be placed into the /experts/libraries directory)
  3. Each expert will be launched in one account, in a separate terminal, only on one chart selected by the Participant.
  4. All competing experts will work on the Organizer's equipment only, without any external control.
  5. Prior to being accepted for participation in the Championship, each expert will be tested by the Organizer for its compliance with the formal rules.
  6. Experts can contain limitations to be used outside the Championship, but they must:
    • work normally and be tested on the whole interval of year 2006 (for portfolio strategies no history testing is necessary, simple description will be enough)
    • work normally in accounts the numbers of which are from 400 000 to 405 000
    • work normally with demo accounts opened on the server of demo.metaquotes.net:443
    • properly consider symbol settings without rigidly specified parameters (limitations on lots, spreads, minimal deviation from the market price, etc.)
    • never contain any critical bugs (like looping or hanging up, etc.) or explicitly harmful actions in the expert code
    • be economical with the use of resources on the processor and pc memory
  7. If the expert's behavior during preliminary testing essentially differs from that during the Championship, it will result in disqualification of the expert.

IV. Trading Terms

  1. A special group of accounts named "demochampionship" on the demo server demo.metaquotes.net will be used for the Championship's purposes. The accounts in this group will be opened by the Organizer only. Account numbers from 400 000 to 405 000 have been already reserved for this purpose.
  2. The initial "virtual deposit" is defined as US$ 10000, leverage 1:100. The deposit may not be topped up.
  3. 12 currency pairs have been selected for the Championship: USDCHF, GBPUSD, EURUSD, USDJPY, AUDUSD, USDCAD, EURGBP, EURCHF, EURJPY, GBPJPY,GBPCHF, EURAUD.
  4. The minimum trade size is 0.1 of a lot, the maximum one is 5 lots with the step of 0.1 of a lot.
  5. The maximum amount of simultaneously opened positions and pending orders is 3.
  6. Trading conditions will be very close to real ones:
    • trade requests processing time 2 to 7 seconds
    • requotes are involved
    • spreads and maximum permissible deviations from the market prices can be changed during the news are published
    • on gaps, during the news are published, there can be slippages in execution
    • trades performed at non-market prices will be canceled
  7. More details can be found in Appendix 1.

V. Publishing of Results

  1. During the Championship, the following will be automatically published in real-time mode:
    • all Participants' statements
    • all journals (terminal logs and logs of the expert advisors) of client terminals
  2. Ratings and comparison tables are updated every 5 minutes.
  3. Logins and passwords of the Participant's accounts will be available to the public. Read only access.

VI. Experts' Codes Safety and Non-Disclosure

  1. The Organizer guarantees that all experts' files received from Participants (including custom indicators and libraries) will be immediately deleted as soon as the Championship finishes, provided that the Participant has not authorized their publishing.
  2. The Organizer guarantees that only MetaQuotes Software Corp. authorized staff will access to the Participants' programs.
  3. The Organizer guarantees that it will not attempt to decompile the experts' files sent by Participants.
  4. In case of the Jury's well-grounded claims against the Participant's program and of the Participant's audit engagement, the trilateral (respectively, by the Jury, the Organizer, the Participant) audit will be performed. If the Participant refuses to be engaged into audit, he or she can be disqualified.

VII. How the Winners Are Determined

  1. After the Championship is finished (00:00 23rd December 2006, trading time), all positions will be forcedly closed.
  2. Only three Participants who have the largest balances by the end of the Championship will be declared as the Winners.
  3. If 2 or more potential winners have equal balances, the final decision will be made by the Jury.
  4. If none of Participants has a positive balance, it will be considered that there is no winner at all.
  5. The Winners must agree to participate in publicity and marketing events conducted by the Organizer and Sponsors, including interviewing, photo-reports, and public announcements through mass media about the events to be conducted. The Organizer and Sponsors are obliged not to publish any real details of the winners (including their names) without their consent.

VIII. How the Award Is Paid

  1. The Winners must send the photocopies of their passports (photo page and residence data) by fax (+7 843 5172753 ext. 106 or +357 25 580191) within 7 working days after they have been declared winners in order to confirm their identity. If this provision is broken, the Winner will be disqualified automatically.
  2. The Winner must provide his or her bank details within 7 working days after he/she has been declared a winner.
  3. If the Organizer cannot contact the Winner (by phone) within 7 days, the Participant can be disqualified by the Jury's decision, and the Winners list will be revised.
  4. The award money will be passed to the Winners' accounts by bank transfer within 7 working days after the bank details have been received.