I have won first place in the August Dukascopy JForex contest! My automated strategy returned over 45% in the month of August. With that honour comes a \$5,000 grand prize in real greenbacks. The setup that I used is a minor updated version of the one I used last month. I continue to adapt my system to expect market conditions of the month ahead. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. This contest is turning out to be more than a nerdy pass time for me as I have finished in the top 10 three times already since it started in April. However, I must reiterate the fact that this is not real trading. It's just a paper trading contest with no real money risked on my part. If I'm really that good at trading to make 45% of return a month, I wouldn't be writing this post at lunch in my cubicle at this moment. So yes, back to reality as I continue my engineering work while improving my own trading and developing my quantitative trading system in my spare time. As my blog's tagline reads, this is an engineer's training to trade for a living.