Interview with William Boatright (wackena)

Hello, William. Your EA, Bogie-ATC2007-1, is showing good results. Have our congratulations on this. You wrote that there had been 1 successful EA for 4 unsuccessful ones last year. What could you say about Expert Advisors participating in this present Championship?
As Phy has been reporting on Better's comments page, again this year is generally not that different from last year. Although this year's overall equity level is higher. Olexandr (Better) is taking us to a new mostly unexplored area of profitability for most MT4 traders.

Yes, his EA is great. Would you try to write one like his?
Yes, I have one now under demo testing. So far, in 1 week the equity, at contest risk level, is up 60%. It is too early to tell if I can master neural-network forecasting EAs, but it has definitely gotten my interest.

Are you a professional trader? do you have any experience in programming?
No, I’m not a professional trader, just an individual trader that has only a basic understanding of C++, MQL4, Java and AppleScript programming.

You wrote you had been trading stock online for 10 years already. Is there anything in automated Forex trading you would like to use in trading with stock?
I now manually trade stocks utilizing many trading strategies I've learned in coding MT4 EAs. I'm very pleased at my success of transposing trading strategies between Forex and stocks. If MetaQuotes would offer automated trading of stocks on a MT4 platform, I would be one of the first customers.

You watched ATC 2006. What lessons did you learn from it? What did you use in your preparations for Championship 2007?
From 2006, I found that many EAs were not consistent throughout the contest. There were a lot of cyclic wins and losses. Again, this year I see some of the same, but a few have been very consistent winners. This year, my contest EA is based on a lot of trade history analysis to try to understand short-term trends and best time of day to open positions. So far, so good. But the contest is not over yet.

Let’s discuss your EA. It is attached to the EURUSD daily chart, but it opens trades at 8:00 p.m. (server time). What other timeframes does it consider?
The EA works virtually the same on any chart timeframe as utilized timeframes are hard coded in the EA. I find this makes the EA more reliable. I use multiple hard coded timeframes to detect trends. I would not like to say which timeframes as it is what makes the EA what it is. The chart timeframe selection is mostly for convenient viewing.

How did you come to the idea of writing an Expert Advisor that would open trades by time? You wrote in your profile that the EA detected a trend first. Could you, please, precise how it detects the trend?
On most completed daily bars, the high is above the open, and low is beneath the open. In theory, on start of new daily bar, you should be able to open a long and short positions each day and win over 90%. But not knowing the interpolation of future daily bar makes this a bad risk. The EA compares bar trends from several timeframes and decides whether the daily trend at 8 p.m. server time is currently moving up or down, and opens long or short positions.

While we are having this interview, I just noticed that I just had a contest loss. I was in the 2nd place last night and now I'm in the 7th place. This just goes to show how fast contest positions can change.

Yes, but, hopefully, your EA will go up again. What do you think about it?
The EA has chosen correctly over 90% of the trades. But it seems that presently the EURUSD price is consolidating and on very short cyclic price movements. Most are intraday cycles, which make short-term detections more difficult. But, I still feel good that this EA will have a respectful finish on Dec. 22.

Most trades are closed by Stop Loss, whereas the stops themselves are modified rather rarely and at different times. Does your EA detect some important levels when making decision of trailing the Stop Loss?
Yes, the trailing stop is a code designed, when activated by a calculated profit level, to stay within a factored MarketLevel range of price to assure a profit and chase the profit whenever possible.

You are not using closing by market. Do you think the use of trailing stop results in the best closing?
For my applications, this type of TrailingStop (t/s) has been more productive than a fixed market profit level. I've tested the standard t/s found in many EAs and a 3-bar (some call it 3-candle) t/s, and my coded t/s has always performed best for me.

Most trades, approximately 95%, were closed with profits. Is this the result of your purposeful optimization or merely a coincidence with the market behavior?
I believe a little of both. Current variable settings have worked well in Strategy Tester, demos and a live account this year. But these variable settings for Strategy Tester results for 2006 are bad. I can optimize variables for 2006 data and get good results. Because. as we know, this Forex market is very dynamic and I've found that I should regularly re-optimize variables.

Do you use any indicators or patterns?
No conventional indicator is used for this contest EA. Multiple timeframes’ Open, High, Low, Close intraday pattern recognition is a very important integral part.

What analytical tools do you suppose to be the most effective in general?
I'm not sure I know what you mean by analytical tools. Most of my analysis is based on trade data exported to Excel where I compare this to M1 historical data and decide what trade open times are most profitable. I also analysis interpolation of price movement while trade was open and count the number of times price moves to certain high/low levels to determine trade entry and exit values. Many sleepless nights to do this.

Does your strategy work on other currency pairs? Would it be possible to create an Expert Advisor that would trade on 2 or 3 pairs using this strategy?
I would think yes, as long as each pair has its own variable settings. I chose the EURUSD pair for the contest, because price cycles were less erratic than other pairs I tested. I have not tested this multiple pair concept within this EA.

You are using an aggressive money management for the purposes of the Championship. We witnessed that EAs having aggressive money-management system rose swiftly and cut out. Aren’t you afraid of that the same fate will befall your EA?
Yes, that thought is always with me. I used this degree of risk for the contest and, at this risk level, a cut out is very possible. In the real world of live trading, my risk level is substantially lower.

Thank you for the interview, William and we are wishing you further success!

Reporting the 9th Week of the Championship (26 November-2 December) 9 weeks have passed since the beginning of the contest. The unconditional leaders seem to have already dug in their places, but the fight goes on, so very different Participants may win.	Reporting the 10th Week of the Championship (3-9 December) Ten weeks of the Championship are behind us. Only two weeks are left until the contest ends.
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