How to win Forex competitions and win prizes

[alphadude]

A poster recently argued that you can't win trading contests by cheating.

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/t2w...-apr-2012-best-prizes-ever-3.html#post1851002

the following is a simple technique. Variations of it does exists.

open two accounts; and run two strategies that are reverse of each other. i.e.:

strategy 1:
- buy 10 units of EURUSD

strategy 2:
- sell 10 units of EURUSD

hold all trades until end of contest; then liquidate.

one strategy will be losing; and the other winning. Of course there is a *small* chance that both strategies will breakeven; but it is low probability.

Majority of forex brokers encourage competitions using micro accounts; as low as $500. Losing $500 in one account; to win a prize of $20,000 in the other account; is not such a bad idea after all.

Moreover; entering trading contests with paper money (such as trade2win contests); is free money for cheaters. losing $$$ on paper money in one account; to win a price worth $50 ~ $500 is not bad.

i did a backtest of the above strategies in April 2012; strategy 1 lost 15%; and strategy 2 made 15%.

notice how the max profitable percentage of strategy2 was about 40%; at the beginning of April.

you could just liquidate your positions and stop trading at that time. and you are done for the month.

If you observe some winners in trade2win contests; you will see this behavior. users stop trading suddenly after the equity curve reached a high mark. and also; you will see that they only traded a position or two.

If you have any other technique; please share it.

Disclaimer: the purpose of this thread is to expose the cheating techniques; so trade2win mods can spot cheaters; hence keeping the contests genuine. Following this techinque may not improve your trading career; despite you may end up winning prizes. many retail forex brokers have weekly and monthly competitions; with prizes reaching as high as $50K. now that you know about this secret; go for your life; and start a career of collecting prizes from trading contests.

 

[Trader333]

Well we do have the ability to spot multiple accounts and have disqualified several people in the past for doing so. The new rules state that you must have a current and valid T2W username and if not then you will not qualify for any prizes.


Paul

 

[Ross Spur]

But isn't opening two accounts a type of cheating that will be spotted?

 

[alphadude]

But isn't opening two accounts a type of cheating that will be spotted?

some people open an account A with broker 1; and account B with broker 2.

use account A for contests; and account B as a hedge; so in case you didn't win the contest; losses from account A are covered by wins from account B. trades must be almost simaltenous.

you may not win this month on account A; but you may do so the following months.

 

[Lord Flasheart]

ive seen guys on zulu use 8 accounts to souble up every time so that they are left with 1 decent account and hope others follow.If they cant trade it will soon be found out.

 

[barjon]

alpha

there are two snags to this:

1. if you're going to go "all in" you may find that the initial volatility fluctuations stops both trades by virtue of insufficient margin.

2. if you have a choice of pairs then you still have to chance being on the most volatile one ( the one that reaches the greatest extremes)

 

[alphadude]

ive seen guys on zulu use 8 accounts to souble up every time so that they are left with 1 decent account and hope others follow.If they cant trade it will soon be found out.

it reminds me of the stock newsletter scams of the 1980s.

fellow newsletter writer; offers weekly stock recommendations in newsletter for free; for a bunch of customers. he will send buy calls to 50% of customers; and sell calls to the other 50%.

Each week; he stops sending newsletters to the group where calls were wrong. Then he split the remaining customers to 50%/50% again;

he keeps doing it; until the remaining customres start buying his service; as they have seen few weeks of successful calls.

 

[alphadude]

alpha

there are two snags to this:

1. if you're going to go "all in" you may find that the initial volatility fluctuations stops both trades by virtue of insufficient margin.

2. if you have a choice of pairs then you still have to chance being on the most volatile one ( the one that reaches the greatest extremes)

absolutely; the high leverage used is counterintuitive. however it does work sometimes. see the backtest in April for example; it gained momentum in the first week and reached 40% equity.

it's a gamble; with no downside; since it is paper money.

if you open more than 2 accounts; you increase the change of winning.

 

[the hare]

Well we do have the ability to spot multiple accounts and have disqualified several people in the past for doing so. The new rules state that you must have a current and valid T2W username and if not then you will not qualify for any prizes.


Paul

Could I just point out the blindingly obvious ?

you can have multiple usernames at t2w !



its not really worth cheating to win an ipod, but when there's 50k up for grabs, its worth a punt. I think most people would be surprised at how frequently random systems produce outstanding results, add in an agressive position sizing technique and you stand a decent chance of winning most competitions if you can get enough versions running.

The other interesting aspect is just how few random systems you'd need to stand a reasonable chance of one doing well, I dont really want to discuss this but its probably less than a lot of people might think.

This is one of the reaons that I'm particularly critical of any business that runs competitions, its a cynical and hypocritical manipulation of simple statitics, and you should hang your head in shame. As a means of marketing its highly unethical, and it lacks integrity (which is why you see the likes of Baghdady resorting to this stuff)

worse still its wide open to manipulation by anyone who can be arsed to do it.

 

[Trader333]

Yes and if you do then more often than not we know and that will disqualify you as has already happened.


Paul

 

[Lord Flasheart]

it reminds me of the stock newsletter scams of the 1980s.

fellow newsletter writer; offers weekly stock recommendations in newsletter for free; for a bunch of customers. he will send buy calls to 50% of customers; and sell calls to the other 50%.

Each week; he stops sending newsletters to the group where calls were wrong. Then he split the remaining customers to 50%/50% again;

he keeps doing it; until the remaining customres start buying his service; as they have seen few weeks of successful calls.

yep,thats how a tipping service works,they send out 10,000 different horses to 10 different punters and end up with 10,000 happy punters for a while

 

[Ross Spur]

Slightly OT, but it's always interesting that T2W contest winners tend to make similar pip gains -- and losers losses, for that matter. If these competitions were more like the £100 spank the bucket shop thread, we'd probably see some more realistic results.

 

[NVP]

it reminds me of the stock newsletter scams of the 1980s.

fellow newsletter writer; offers weekly stock recommendations in newsletter for free; for a bunch of customers. he will send buy calls to 50% of customers; and sell calls to the other 50%.

Each week; he stops sending newsletters to the group where calls were wrong. Then he split the remaining customers to 50%/50% again;

he keeps doing it; until the remaining customres start buying his service; as they have seen few weeks of successful calls.

and its the classic "5 winners in a row" scam as publicised recently by Derren Brown....the "final" customers will buy the system having quite litrally been sent 5 winning tips in a row....the laws of probability delivering the scammer some very keen customers and easy earnings ! :smart:

N

Derren Brown: The System | Watch Free Documentary Online

 

[samirdu16]

clever but looks a bit risky does not it ?