By now, I think everyone would have watched "Wall Street", so I'll just skip my review and critic on that. Anyways, to excite aspiring traders out there (like me), FXCM is hosting a trading contest that starts middle of this month, 17th of October. Prizes for the top 3 spots total an amount of $20,000. On top of that, the entry fee is $0! Check it out here. The demo account that generates the most money in the contest wins.
With favorable conditions like this, there are bound to be catches. So please take note if you are entering. Firstly and most importantly, if you win their prizes, FXCM will have the right to use, copy, modify and make available to the public your winning trading strategy. This means that FXCM will co-own your code. If they release it, everybody will know of your strategy and maybe trade it too. This will surely dilute further winnings with your strategy after the contest (if you still want to carry on with the strategy).
Secondly, you cannot make manual trades for this contest. Trading will have to be purely automated using FXCM Strategy Trader. This means that you have to learn or know programming if you are going to enter. Trading will be mechanical, akin to robotics competition, which you design the robots and they are on their own once the contest starts.
Thirdly, winnings will be credited into your FXCM account (you will be forced to open one if you do not have), where you can withdraw later on or trade with. This is not much of a problem, but worth taking note.
Well, with a cost of nothing for a potential return of $10,000. I am sure the above three catches are reasonable enough. The first catch is the most detrimental one, but if you edit and optimise your code to perform from 17th October to 3rd December exclusively, this would not affect you too much in your general strategy even if they do own your code later on.
Also, the contest allows multiple entries, so you can just send in as many as you want (just that you will need time to code them). This also means that you can send in two strategies that are opposites of each other, so that you will definitely have a winner.
FXCM promises that there will be a bigger scale contest early next year with prizes totalling $100,000. So I recommend that you test your luck in this October one, and try again next year.
