Thread: May's Contest Results - Winner Returns 1025.22%

Below are the final standings in May's King of the Micro contest!


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1. Netherlands - 1025.22% Survey / Trade Report (.xls version) / Interview
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2. China - 839.95% Survey / Trade Report (.xls version)
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3. China - 734.69% Survey / Trade Report (.xls version)
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4. Australia - 563.04%
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5. China - 517.67%
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6. South Africa - 452.86%
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7. United Kingdom - 440.89%
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8. China - 436.78%
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9. Vietnam - 428.46%
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10. Australia - 366.79%
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Congratulations to the top ten!


*Past performance is not indicative of future results, as returns may vary according to market conditions.

Whatever they're smokin over in asia I want some. Returns are outlandish

I'd like to be able to see what the first weeks returns were compared to the second weeks returns. Is there any way that you would be able to leave up the first weeks and just add the second weeks?

The reason why I'm saying this is because I thought I saw one return above 600% and now there isn't one even above 500%.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Elvis T

I'd like to be able to see what the first weeks returns were compared to the second weeks returns. Is there any way that you would be able to leave up the first weeks and just add the second weeks?

The reason why I'm saying this is because I thought I saw one return above 600% and now there isn't one even above 500%.

Thanks!

It is possible that the traders who made those gains the first week, lost some percentages and have fallen below their gains the first week.

That's what I would assume happened, but I'm just not sure if that's the case because the original post was edited. I would have thought they would have just added the second weeks results in addition to the first weeks. I'm wondering why limit the information that is shared?

After all, the contest is meant to increase our good trades so we can continue trading. If something happened in the market that caused the top ten micro accounts to lose 200%, I think it would be beneficial to at least be able to look at what happened. At this point, who knows....

Just an observation/asumption; not all persons that show up in the contest weekly standings are actually participating in the competition. Remember an equity of $500 automatically enters you in the competition whether you choose to or not.

Persons will make gains and withdraw funds and as such will show up in the standings one week and are out of the standings the following week. While others can just have losses and are lowered in the standings or the dreaded margin-call and are out of the competition

if a trader can be assign a number, it will be easier to follow week after week. if one week a trader # 260 is in first place then next week fall to the 6 place and then to 2 place the week after, we will know that it is the same trader compare to only the country they are from.

Hi Elvis T,

Weekly changes occur for all of the reasons already mentioned (margin calls, trading losses, withdrawals made, etc.) This is true especially with the volatility we have seen this month. More volatility usually means more movement in the top ten.

As for displaying the weekly results and keeping those weekly reports visible, we used to actually do that. The reason we stopped is because towards the end of the month, people were getting confused. We had traders asking which top ten list was the most recent (even though we clearly labeled each list.) We decided it was simpler to "overwrite" the top ten list every week up until the final results and I do not see us changing this back.

I think trying to speculate and change your strategy based on what the current top ten traders are doing on a percentage basis is not a good way to dictate what you might trade. Traders could be making money or losing money in any instrument available to them. Also you have to consider that you don't know how much leverage any of them are using either. I don't think a trading edge could be developed based on top ten traders' activity. If you think of a way where this could be beneficial, please let me know.

Thanks and have a great day!

Rob
rob@fxcm.com

Originally Posted by Elvis T

That's what I would assume happened, but I'm just not sure if that's the case because the original post was edited. I would have thought they would have just added the second weeks results in addition to the first weeks. I'm wondering why limit the information that is shared?

After all, the contest is meant to increase our good trades so we can continue trading. If something happened in the market that caused the top ten micro accounts to lose 200%, I think it would be beneficial to at least be able to look at what happened. At this point, who knows....

Hi mick,

Thank you for your post!

I think adding a number is a pretty good idea, but I don't think it would be effective because people wouldn't necessarily remember what numbers were what. There are thousands of traders in the contest each month. It would be hard to keep track.

I will try to think of something that will still look clean and simple, but will give people a little bit more insight on where the trader has been and not just where they are currently.

Let me know if you have any ideas yourself!

Rob
rob@fxcm.com

Originally Posted by mick

if a trader can be assign a number, it will be easier to follow week after week. if one week a trader # 260 is in first place then next week fall to the 6 place and then to 2 place the week after, we will know that it is the same trader compare to only the country they are from.

a few time i keep the number of trader positions but stop since we can not know who do what.

a simple way to do it is to give a number only to the top 10 participants, can look like that.

position for the first week

position 1 = 20 (number of the trader), 2 = 21, 3 = 22, 4 = 23, 5 = 24, 6 = 25, 7 = 26, 8 = 27, 9 = 28, 10 = 29

if the next week some trader are out of the 10 position they are replace by trader with a new number, let say that the trader of position 6 (# 25) and position 8 (# 27) are out, then the new trader will be given the # 30 and 31.

position the 2 week,

position 1 = # 22, 2 = #20, 3 = #24, 4 = #29, 5 = #23, 6 = #30, 7 = #28, 8 = #31, 9 = 21, 10 = #26

so will know that trader that was in the 1 st position, now is at position # 2 and the position 2 is now at the 9 position. same if the # 25 and #27 are back in the top 10 we will know

like this it will be possible to fellow the trader and know the trader that are able to stay in the top 10.

You can call them by first names, e.g. Michael G. (UK) or Michael (UK).

Originally Posted by Rob at FXCM

Hi Elvis T,

Weekly changes occur for all of the reasons already mentioned (margin calls, trading losses, withdrawals made, etc.) This is true especially with the volatility we have seen this month. More volatility usually means more movement in the top ten.

I feel it would be beneficial to be able to correlate the volatility of the market to the weekly returns of the top ten. Like seeing if the weekly top ten are making larger returns in ranging or trending markets.

If someone was in the top ten from one week to the next, then put in parenthesis which position they were at the previous week.

As for displaying the weekly results and keeping those weekly reports visible, we used to actually do that. The reason we stopped is because towards the end of the month, people were getting confused. We had traders asking which top ten list was the most recent (even though we clearly labeled each list.) We decided it was simpler to "overwrite" the top ten list every week up until the final results and I do not see us changing this back.

I would think putting the dates or "Week 1" then "Week 2" should easily clear this up.

I think trying to speculate and change your strategy based on what the current top ten traders are doing on a percentage basis is not a good way to dictate what you might trade. Traders could be making money or losing money in any instrument available to them. Also you have to consider that you don't know how much leverage any of them are using either. I don't think a trading edge could be developed based on top ten traders' activity. If you think of a way where this could be beneficial, please let me know.

Thanks and have a great day!

Rob
rob@fxcm.com

Here is a great example. At the beginning of this month, I though there are 4 or five people with a +500% return within the first week. The next week I want to say the highest return was less than 400%. If all of the top five positions lose over the next, then I think it would be good to take a look at the market and see what kinds of actions and if there is something to be learned or to look out for. If everyone makes large returns, then also, it would be nice to see what kinds of things happened.

On top of that, we can't go back and look to see if someone made one or two large trades or they continuously built up their account. The one or two large trades vs. more smaller trades will really help everyone see what kinds of trades were successful over that month. Based on this last month, we could assume that one person made a few trades with high leverage. We can see if everyone built up their account values over the first couple of weeks and then while the market was ranging, then no one substantially increased their account values.

I feel it would be beneficial for a lot of the similar reasons we don't trade solely on one month candles. The higher the resolution, the more information we have to use for our benefit. It seems silly to hold out on such simple information because people are getting confused about which week was which. To be completely blunt about it, if you label each week by the date or week number and people struggle with which week is which, I don't think the information would benefit them even if they knew which week was which.

we can not identify the trader by name, they will probably be against it, also it maybe have a 100 trader name ''john''.

if we put to much details it will make it more difficult to fellow.

Originally Posted by mick

we can not identify the trader by name, they will probably be against it, also it maybe have a 100 trader name ''john''.

if we put to much details it will make it more difficult to fellow.

I think the most beneficial information would be to indicate if one of the traders from the previous week's top ten was in the current weeks top ten.

So after taking everything into consideration, I decided to add each week's standings below the current top ten. You can see how this appears in the most recent thread about June's contest.

I am not allowed to add any more identifying marks on these anonymous accounts, but you can get an idea of the ebb and flow of the contest's leaderboard.

Thanks for all the great ideas!

Rob
rob@fxcm.com