First we decided to calculate the number of Expert Advisors whose Equity is larger than the starting balance, those who lost by the end of the first month and those who did not execute a single trade.

Fig.1. Distribution of Expert Advisors (in percentage).

The number of Expert Advisors that had Equity value larger than the starting balance ($10,000) is equal to 195, i.e. 28.1%. Participants that had less than the starting balance by the result of the first month, as usual, were twice as many - 482 (68.4%). And 25 Expert Advisors (3.50%) had not executed any trades for 23 trading days.

Let us compare these figures to the previous Championship values for the same period. Despite the strongest trend on all currency pairs (or, perhaps, thanks to it), the number of profitable Expert Advisors has grown. A year ago only 23% (139 Participants out of 603) finished their first month with profit. Last year 444 Expert Advisors (73.6%) were loss-making. Thus, the number of profitable EAs is larger by 5.1%, loss-making EAs are less by 5.2%.

One more interesting regularity can be noted. A year ago the number of profitable EAs on the first day was equal to 172, a month later it decreased to 139, i.e. by 20%. This year the situation is the same - 242 profitable Expert Advisors on the first day and 195 - after a month. So, the number of profit making EAs decreased by 20% as well.

Besides, there are some other traditions. The participant ANG3110 was one of the first to finish participation in ATC 2007 - on the 19th of October his account was equal only to $101.69. This year his EA caused a commotion – it managed to increase a starting account twice already on the first day of the Championship. Though, the second week his participation in the contest was over - $114.70 were left on his trading account.

In each competition, Participants are divided into two groups. One includes successful Expert Advisors, i.e. those having Equity equal to $10,000 or more. The second group is larger - it contains EAs whose Equity is lower than the starting balance. We have calculated the average Equity value for both groups. The below graph shows results by days.

Fig. 2. Distribution of Expert Advisors by Equity.

On the 31st of October, the average Equity of profitable Expert Advisors was equal to $21,277.95, while that of loss-making EAs was $3,676.24. The gap is huge! However, the average Equity of all Participants of the ATC 2008 was equal to $8,769.04, which was 9% more than previous year ($8,026).

A strong trend resulted in a considerable reallocation of money on contesting accounts, but the average Equity almost did not change. Only winners earned more than usual, while losers lost more than usual.

Now let us analyze distribution of Expert Advisors by Equity.

Fig. 3. Distribution of Expert Advisors by Equity.

The distribution peak is in the range from 0 to $1,000 on a trading account - 136 Participants are listed in this range. We remind you, last year the peak was between $10,000 and $11,000 - 87 accounts were in this range by the end of the 4th week.

The second peak is in the range from $9,000 to $10,000 - 71 accounts are there. This year the distribution by Equity became flatter and does not resemble a bell.

Generally, gaps from Friday to Monday were frequent for many currency pairs during the first Championship month. And it is hard to tell which pair would be more preferable for trading. 53 EAs out of 705 traded more than one currency pair, 624 EAs traded only one pair.

Fig. 4. Distribution of Expert Advisors by currency pairs.

The most popular pair is EURUSD, the rarest one is EURAUD - it was traded only by the simple EA of warwickquant from Great Britain, who has been already disqualified. However, it is popular among multicurrency EAs - 11 multicurrency EAs out of 53 traded EURAUD.

The distribution of multicurrency EAs is also very interesting. The majority of them traded 2 pairs. None of them traded 8 or 11 pairs.

Fig. 5. Distribution of multicurrency EAs by the number of traded symbols.

Strange as it may seem, the number of EAs trading 10 currency pairs is larger than of those trading 7. Generally, it should be noted that in percentage the number of multicurrency EAs is twice less than last year. In the ATC 2007 about 14% of EAs traded several pairs. Now this value is equal to 7.3%. Perhaps, the task of creating a profitable strategy trading more than one currency pair this year seemed less attractive than a year ago.

One more interesting parameter is the value of trades executed on a currency pair. Of course, the largest number of trades was executed on the most popular pair - EURUSD. Is the order the same for other pairs? Actually, it is not.

Fig. 6. The number of trades for each currency pair.

The second one by the number of trades was GBPUSD, as it should be. But the third place is occupied by EURGBP instead of GBPJPY. Remember, only 23 Participants had chosen EURGBP, while GBPJPY is traded by 41 EAs - almost twice more. Nevertheless, the number of trades on EURGBP (4345) is almost 3 times larger than on GBPJPY (1534)!

Now let us see the total volume in lots traded for each currency pair.

Fig. 7. Volume of executed trade operations in lots for each currency pair.

From this point of view the situation is even more surprising. EURGBP is now on the second place leaving behind even GBPUSD. Besides AUDUSD in this rating is on the fifth place.

Conclusions

1. The average Equity practically does not depend on the current market state - the strongest trend just elicits money redistribution between market participants;
   
2. The strong trend on all currency pairs resulted in a large gap between an average equity of profitable Expert Advisors and that of loss-making ones. This gap increased twice as compared to the previous Championship: $17,602 of ATC 2008 against $8,152 of ATC 2007 first month;
3. The complicacy of creating a trading system for several currency pairs resulted in less multicurrency Expert Advisors - the number of them diminished twice as compared to the previous Championship;

1. The number of EAs trading each currency pair does not always correlate with the total number of trades and total volume of trades executed for these pairs.