T2W Forex Contest - Week 4

[Sharky]

How to enter

Entry is free and takes just a couple of minutes. First, sign up on ForexDesk, using the invitation code "T2WCOMP" and your T2W username. Once you're activated your account, log in and create a new practice account using the default settings. You can call it whatever you like but you must add "#4" to the name, to enter this week's contest. Then make at least one trade during the week to qualify for the prize.

More detailed instructions here: http://www.trade2win.com/boards/t2w...ew-t2w-forex-contest-starts-sun-15th-may.html

Rules

- Contest started last night Sunday 5th May at 6pm ET, 11pm BST.
- Contest finishes after 5 days, on Friday 10th Jun at 6pm ET, 11pm BST
- Enter any time before the contest finishes.
- The winner will be judged by their P&L for the week.
- Only entry per person

Prizes

- Top Trader (Highest P&L)
As last week's prize was so popular, we decided to give away another one this week! What is it? It's the most-wished-for, most-gifted, and the most 5-star reviews of any product on Amazon.com... The Kindle eBook Reader (Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6")



Good Trading! :clover:

 

[timsk]

Hiya Paul,
Good decision re. the prize for this week!


Q. If you're wanting to close half your position in FD - how do you do that? I was short 8 lots and wanted to close 4 to lock in a small profit, so I bought 4 lots at market thinking this would leave me net short by 4 lots. In fact, my original 8 lot short remained open and, in addition, I had a 4 lot long position - which got me into a right ol' kerfuffle!

I think that FD would benefit from some short snappy videos . . .
1. How to enter a market order.
2. How to enter a limit order.
3. How to . . . etc.
Have a gander at these provided by Infinity Futures As one of their customers, I think they're really good.
Tim.

 

[mk31970]

Sharky, forexdesk just closed an open trade I had by itself. What gives? I just lost over $600.

06/06/2011 13:54:39 06/06/2011 13:59:43 GBP/USD Buy 8 1.63590 1.63508 -65.6 -$656.00 0.00

I never put a close or limit order in? I want to compete in the competition, but obviously this platform has many bugs that still exist.

 

[hoodoo man]

Sharky,

How are the bugs coming along in the platform? Any ideas when it will be fully stable with no issues with stops / limits etc? Also, I'd be interested if you are offering cash prizes soon?

Thanks,

Hoodoo

 

[billnye5]

I had a position auto-closed earlier too, $4.5k loss

 

[Lightning McQueen]

I had a position auto-closed earlier too, $4.5k loss

hi bill, i think you'll see you were margin called. so yes, your position will be auto closed if you get one.

 

[Sharky]

Lightning McQueen is correct. If you get a margin call your position(s) will be auto closed. Right now we don't make it very clear when this happens, ie. no email, and no comment on the position. So we need to improve that. This week we'll start making tweaks to the UI, so it's much more obvious. On the plus side, today we successfully resolved the issue from last week where players had negative margin.

 

[Sharky]

Hiya Paul,
Good decision re. the prize for this week!


Q. If you're wanting to close half your position in FD - how do you do that? I was short 8 lots and wanted to close 4 to lock in a small profit, so I bought 4 lots at market thinking this would leave me net short by 4 lots. In fact, my original 8 lot short remained open and, in addition, I had a 4 lot long position - which got me into a right ol' kerfuffle!

I think that FD would benefit from some short snappy videos . . .
1. How to enter a market order.
2. How to enter a limit order.
3. How to . . . etc.
Have a gander at these provided by Infinity Futures As one of their customers, I think they're really good.
Tim.

I agree there's some usability issues at the moment, but we'll start to work on those this week. To close out your position now, you need to click the 'Close' link next to your position then on the next screen decide how many lots to close, so it's currently a two step process.

Good suggestion for the videos, but I think for now we'll wait until we've improved the UI, then hopefully it'll be self-explanatory.

 

[mk31970]

Lightning McQueen is correct. If you get a margin call your position(s) will be auto closed. Right now we don't make it very clear when this happens, ie. no email, and no comment on the position. So we need to improve that. This week we'll start making tweaks to the UI, so it's much more obvious. On the plus side, today we successfully resolved the issue from last week where players had negative margin.

My closed trade wasn't a margin call.

 

[counter_violent]

My closed trade wasn't a margin call.

I had the same thing happened on a 10 lot long aud usd
Position just closed itself

 

[counter_violent]

Lightning McQueen is correct. If you get a margin call your position(s) will be auto closed. Right now we don't make it very clear when this happens, ie. no email, and no comment on the position. So we need to improve that. This week we'll start making tweaks to the UI, so it's much more obvious. On the plus side, today we successfully resolved the issue from last week where players had negative margin.

Ah right ! Now I think I understand. So whatever positions you have on, they will be closed down position by position at any point where you have neg margin. OK well fair enough on that front but, if you were to use a stop in the real world, this would free up available margin because the potential loss figure is known in advance.

 

[hoodoo man]

If you were to use a stop in the real world, this would free up available margin because the potential loss figure is known in advance.

No, margin is not reduced by working orders in the real world - either on a futures exchange or in the spot forex market. In institutional FX, you will be given a credit limit with your counterparties which is not affected by stops. Accessing FX through a retail broker, the standard is to offer you a set leverage ratio on your deposit. Futures markets, margins (performance bond) are set by the exchanges and are not affected by "potential loss figure is known in advance".

 

[timsk]

Monin' Sharky,
Another little bug, sort of . . .
When you place a market order, a notice pops up saying "Order placed successfully. It'll be processed right away!" It's taken a while to cotton on that this means that the FD software acknowledges that an order has been placed and will execute it IF there's sufficient margin available. If there isn't, it doesn't execute it (fair enough!) - but it doesn't tell you that.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't trade such large positions for the available margin, so it wouldn't be an issue. Even so, I think the wording could be made clearer. Something along the lines of "Order placed and will be processed immediately, subject to available margin!" And then if there isn't sufficient margin - it should tell you in the same box.
Just my £0.02p worth.
Tim.

 

[counter_violent]

No, margin is not reduced by working orders in the real world - either on a futures exchange or in the spot forex market. In institutional FX, you will be given a credit limit with your counterparties which is not affected by stops. Accessing FX through a retail broker, the standard is to offer you a set leverage ratio on your deposit. Futures markets, margins (performance bond) are set by the exchanges and are not affected by "potential loss figure is known in advance".

Ok good stuff. Just to clarify then for any retail SB'ers. Do not try and run this competition account in the same way that you might run your SB accounts.

 

[timsk]

Ok good stuff. Just to clarify then for any retail SB'ers. Do not try and run this competition account in the same way that you might run your SB accounts.[/

I'd be inclined to phrase that the other way around C_V!

 

[Sharky]

Today's update of the competition leaderboard is reminiscent of last week's with Gordon Gekko and mk31970 leading the field.



Good trading! :clover:

 

[counter_violent]

I'd be inclined to phrase that the other way around C_V!

Yes indeed.

 

[Sharky]

I had a position auto-closed earlier too, $4.5k loss

My closed trade wasn't a margin call.

We just checked and both the positions that you reported as auto-closed, occurred due to a margin call.

Right now we close positions at random, until available margin is back above 0%.

We're considering changing this to closing ALL positions, as this is what FXCM does too. Let us know if you think this is a better solution.

We're also going to add an 'Activity' tab that lets you go back through all the events in your account so you can confirm that a margin call took place. At the moment you can only see the last 5 events on your account page.

 

[Sharky]

Sharky,

How are the bugs coming along in the platform? Any ideas when it will be fully stable with no issues with stops / limits etc? Also, I'd be interested if you are offering cash prizes soon?

Thanks,

Hoodoo

So the issues with stops/limits from last week, we're pretty sure they were related to accounts that fell into negative margin. This has since been fixed. If anyone playing this week thinks a stop or limit didn't get triggered then please report it immediately.

Hence right now, there are no known issue or bugs in the web interface. There's just some usability issues that we'll tackle in the coming weeks. The MT4 integration does have some known issues and we'll be working on those this week.

So if you were thinking of waiting until the platform was more stable, now might be a good time to jump in.

 

[Sharky]

Monin' Sharky,
Another little bug, sort of . . .
When you place a market order, a notice pops up saying "Order placed successfully. It'll be processed right away!" It's taken a while to cotton on that this means that the FD software acknowledges that an order has been placed and will execute it IF there's sufficient margin available. If there isn't, it doesn't execute it (fair enough!) - but it doesn't tell you that.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't trade such large positions for the available margin, so it wouldn't be an issue. Even so, I think the wording could be made clearer. Something along the lines of "Order placed and will be processed immediately, subject to available margin!" And then if there isn't sufficient margin - it should tell you in the same box.
Just my £0.02p worth.
Tim.

Yes I agree that approach would make more sense. For now we'll just update it to your suggested wording, which is a lot clearer. Thanks for the suggestion!