Update: I have since won the JForex strategy contest a few times. If you are looking to learn JForex programming, you can start with an explanation of my winning strategy and my long list of JForex posts. The Dukascopy JForex Strategy Contest began last week. Starting this month, Dukascopy offers \$15,000 total of cash prizes to the top 10 automated trading systems every month. However, before entering, there are a couple of clauses in their contest rules that caught my attention.
- Cash prizes are deposited into contestant's Dukascopy account (Ranking and Awarding Rules #5).
- All source code needs to be submitted and agrees to be published (Ranking and Awarding Rules #2 and #6).
#1 is troublesome because it means winners have to open an account with Dukascopy if they don't already have an account with them. But that isn't a big deal since they are actually one of the best forex brokers. I planned to open an account with them anyway. However, #2 will certainly turn many people away. The requirement to disclose source code in an automated trading contest is almost unheard of as far as I know. Are you willing to disclose your winning system just for that few hundred, or a even few thousand, dollars of prize money? In any case, I decided to enter this contest anyway just for fun. Yet, you can be sure that I won't be using any proprietary logic in my system. In fact, I just finished my automated trading strategy today and it is now running. I will discuss about my strategy after it completes its first trade. That might take a while as my system is expected to make fewer than 5 trades in a month.