w00t! IB Trading Olympiad begins

[follow]

Who here is participating in the IB Olympiad? I saw an older thread where people were talking about entering, so I thought I'd start a new one where we could post how our applications are doing.

I turned on my application at 6:00 this morning, and now, 10 hours and 6 trades later, it's currently up about $6500.

I thank God that it's doing so well, especially since I did zero forward testing. I was there watching it make its first trade; it's exhilarating to watch a piece of computer software make $2000 in 10 minutes.

How has everyone else's luck been?

 

[frostengine]

$6,000 in the first day, thats impressive.

Has your performance continued to be as good as your first day?

 

[isaacly]

what are you guys in and are you buying blocks at a time?

 

[walterjennings]

very impressive. and here I am being all happy my bot didn't lose money this morning (had a bad week) mind sharing info on what you are trading? how much capital they give you? etc.

 

[frostengine]

Did the original poster dissapear? What about other people in the competion? Are other people doing as great as this guy started?

 

[follow]

Hi, I'm still here, I just haven't been checking this thread enough I guess. After no replies for several days I figured it would fade into oblivion.

Has your performance continued to be as good as your first day?

In a word, no. A lot has changed since last week actually. IB hadn't set up the accounts correctly so they halted the Olympiad about an hour after I posted my success. They reset everyone's balance and restarted this past Monday.

In the interim I got ambitious and started tweaking settings. What a bad idea. When my account was enabled again I decided to try my strategy on a smaller time interval and in the first 24 hours I lost about $3,000. Slippage and commissions were eating me alive. Once I reverted to my original settings, I started doing better. I broke even last night and it looks like I broke $104,000 just a few minutes ago.

mind sharing info on what you are trading? how much capital they give you? etc.

I'm buying and selling currencies with a strategy based on a stochastic oscillator. Right now I only trade EUR/USD but I may try to diversify later on. IB started each participant off with $100,000.

 

[frostengine]

Very impressive.... how did you develop your strategy? Just got lucky backtesting various thing? Or a strategy you have traded before?

Looking at the past years winners you look to be on a good pace to win a lot of money...

congrats

 

[follow]

Very impressive.... how did you develop your strategy? Just got lucky backtesting various thing? Or a strategy you have traded before?

I haven't really traded before. After I heard about the the Olympiad I spent a lot of time doodling on graphs and trying to come up with formulas. Eventually I realized that what I was after was very close to a stochastic oscillator, so I started building around that.

Looking at the past years winners you look to be on a good pace to win a lot of money...

Well, there's still a lot of time left for me to screw up.

I thank God things are going good ATM because I know there are a gazillion and one things that could go wrong. My code isn't even close to bulletproof. I have a strong urge to shut the thing off (or at least crank the leverage way down) and just sit on my profits.

But hey, where's the fun in that? Current balance = $107,500.

 

[frostengine]

I understand what you mean about a lot of time for something to go wrong. I recently went live in a real money account with an automated strategy. The first couple of days went GREAT and then downhill from there. Do you mind sharing a few more details about your system. Nothing specific. Just general concepts.

For example:

How are your exits structured? Do you use profit targets, stops, or only exit your position when you get a reversal signal from your strategy?

Would you consider your strategy a trend following strategy, or counter trend?

What sort of timeframe does your strategy trade on? Since you said the first day you had something like 6 trades in a 10 hour period, I would guess you trade on a rather small time frame. Probably in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 minute bars?

Good luck and continue to keep us updated. I find it very facinating that someone with very little experience is doing so well.

 

[princetontiger8]

So, I expect to see your name on the weekly roster for top performers?

I'm in this too, and right now the market sucks compared to some easy picks last week.

I don't believe in automated trading since there are so many variables involved, but I'm giving it a shot.