I've been laying low but following the 2 week contest that's been going on since last Sunday.  In front most of the time has been QLaun who currently is up 37.54%.  Impressive? I'm not so sure.  Though his return is the greatest, his maximum drawdown is -21.60.  I'm certainly not trying to take anything away from him but is this high of a drawdown healthy? I guess we'll just have to see what happens the second week.  MartinFXUY actually has a pretty impressive return of over 15% and a maximum drawdown a quarter of QLaun at -5.77.  I'll have more to say later but here are the top traders so far:

1. QLaun +37.54%
2. MartinFXUY +15.72
3. RotcaX +14.08% (MAXIMUM DRAWDOWN OF 0!)
4. Reno +11.05%
5. Dumb Luck +7.62% 

Props should go out to Nick, JCLsFX, and Milton who have a nice return and a low maximum drawdown.  

Where am I? There's 19/23 people actually participating and I'm at #10 with a -0.78% return and a -1.00 maximum drawdown.   

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No. 1 :

I agree, its obvious that some of the guys are doing mad trading just to win - would they trade like that with their real money? The more impressive ones are those with decent returns and low drawdowns.

Submitted by Simon • 2007-04-19 19:17:08

No. 2 :

Because it's a contest I'd have thought the idea was sh1t or bust???? It's early days yet but oh heck ... I'm bottom of the pile

Submitted by Black day • 2007-04-19 19:31:09

No. 3 : yup

Agree with Black day, a short term competition winner (if judged on returns only) is more likely to be the one that puts it all on the line.

A competition run over a year would be more likely to see the all or nothing strategies blow up.

I'm using my normal strategy though with a bit more risk.

Very impressed with RotcaX's results thus far!

Submitted by Milton • 2007-04-19 20:09:29

No. 4 : I agree too

I agree too. I looked at some of the other contests on Oanda and some of them state that you have to keep your max drawdown above a certain figure like -5.0.

Submitted by Rich • 2007-04-19 20:17:53

No. 5 :

ah- love this question too. I read your drawdown posts above this and think this is the best place to post since I think that analysis follows from here. It's all about scale, I think. The best strategies are based on long time scales. For me that means that means that fairly big gains or losses are realized on short time scales. Overall, they make sense on probably a year time scale and +400 pips a month is not unreasonable on an annual time scale.

Submitted by Chad • 2007-04-21 00:57:53

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