New Data on the 8th Week's Top Ten

We have already analyzed results of the top ten based on normalized trades. For this purpose we recalculated all profits and losses got by the top ten Expert Advisors during the third week of the Championship, as if all trades had been opened with the volume of 0.1 lots. We obtained normalized values of the profit, drawdown and profit factor. We decided to recalculate results of the eighth week the same way.

As 5 weeks ago, the leader is still the Expert Advisor of the Participant Gorez. And he is far ahead of other Participants. But this time we wanted to have not only the snapshot of the top ten Participants, but also see their trading character in dynamics. For this purpose we have constructed mini-equity charts of normalized trades like those displayed on the first page of the Championship.

All charts represent mini-equity of Participants by trading days. This is how the first page of the Championship would look like if trading were performed by the fixed volume of 0.1 lots. In such a case the advantage of Gorez is evident practically from the first days of the Championship. By the end of the first month his mini-equity reaches its peak. As we remember this was the time of the strongest trend for all currency pairs.

During the second month the mini-equity of his account does not change greatly, the EA opens only short positions on GBPJPY. However, as the fall of JPY pairs has stopped, it is now much more difficult for it to make money.

To analyze mini-equities of other top ten Participants we had to make a separate chart displaying the dynamics of EAs' trading activity.

Now we can see that the Participant Cronex also had the most favorable period during the first month. But the second month brought him small losses in trading 0.1 lots, so the mini-equity of his virtual account would have diminished till $11,960. The fall would have been not more than 10% of the maximal sum equal to $13,160. But we remind you this would have been if trading 0.1 lots. In reality the Expert Advisor of the Participant Cronex had much larger losses and its maximal drawdown was more than 60%.

Fig. 1. Balance chart of Cronex.

Another Participant with an interesting mini-equity chart whom we saw already on the first weeks of the Championship was Liliput. He also traded very well in October, but November was not so successful in terms of trading for him.

Fig. 2. Balance chart Liliput.

It can be supposed that Expert Advisors of three Participants described above (Gorez, Cronex and Liliput) are trend-following EAs or at least they fill better in a trend. We can also mention the Expert Advisor of amelabs that showed very good results during the first weeks of the Championship and voluntary finished its participation on the third week.

One more interesting mini-equity chart is that of pacohernandezg. Like a real equity chart this one also has a step-type form. Though, his contesting account has much deeper steps.

Fig. 3. Balance chart of pacohernandezg.

A separate group is constructed by Participants PrizmaL, strelec and abeiks who trade EURGBP and compete with each other in the smoothness of their equity charts. Prizmal is on the first place of the top ten and has the jaggiest chart of mini-equity.

Fig. 4. Balance chart of PrizmaL.

And the last Participant analyzed is fireflies from Indonesia. If compare the Equity of his contesting account and his mini-equity, the chart of normalized trades has the "advantage of smoothness".

Fig. 5. Balance chart of fireflies.

The conclusion that can be made is that large trade volumes lead to large risks. Despite that many of analyzed Participants use various mechanisms of managing positions opened, the stability of results does not become better.

But of course none of the Participants traded the minimal volume of 0.1 lots, many of them used the maximally possible volume of 5 lots when opening positions. That allowed considerably increasing the profit of trading operations. Let's call the ratio between a real Participant's equity and his mini equity the "leverage effect" and construct a table using the following formula:

The conclusion that can be made from this table is evident: strategies trading by trend and making money in medium-term intervals have a lower leverage effect than those trading small targets and holding trades during a very short period of time.

A contradiction occurs. In order to trade small targets, positions with a large volume should be opened for a very short period of time. And it is often impossible to find such conditions for trading. In this respect strategies with larger period of position holding are more preferable.

Reporting the 8th Week (17-23 November) It is the first time for the last two weeks that we see a new leader of the Championship.	Jury Session Record of the 1st of December 2008 Not only Participants were the subject of Jury discussion on this session.
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