Interview with Alexey Masterov (ATC 2012)

Interview on Automated Trading Championship 2012 from 08.01.2013.

We do our best to introduce all the leading Championship Participants to our audience in reasonable time. To achieve that, we closely monitor the most promising contestants in our TOP-10 and arrange interviews with them. However, the sharp rise of Alexey Masterov (reinhard) up to the third place has become a real surprise!

Alexey, your Expert Advisor burst into TOP-10 during the last week. What position did it occupy before that?

It came 11th during the twelfth week. My Expert Advisor did not show any impressive results during the first two months. It fell down to 300th position and even lower. Frankly, there were no reasons to be too optimistic at the time. But the hope remained, of course.

The final third place must have taken you aback. It is the first time in the Championship's history that the Participant enters TOP-3 so unexpectedly.

Yes, it came as a surprise for me. Although I believed that my Expert Advisor is a promising one, the circumstances could have been unfavorable preventing my trading robot from showing its power. My Expert Advisor is designed for trends and the market was favorable to it during the last two weeks, especially when the traded symbol opened with a gap after December 25.

It seems that your trading robot has a very aggressive strategy staying in the market almost all the time. Why did it trade so frequently?

I wouldn't call it aggressive. The robot has performed only 53 deals. My Expert Advisor uses a reversal strategy trading without Stop Losses. Besides, Take Profit level is big enough. Therefore, there is an impression that the Expert Advisor is constantly in the market. However, on the penultimate day, it reached Take Profit level and did not enter the market after that.

You've said that your Expert Advisor has been designed for trends but trend following strategies usually do not use position reversals for trading. What is the essence of your trading rules?

The trading process is based on the moving averages: one of them is very slow, while another one is faster. Besides, the averages are calculated not only for the traded symbol but also for other symbols with weight ratios.

Your trading robot made $25 000 during the last week of the competition occupying the third place. But the history shows that it already had similar deals with big TakeProfit. Why did it appear so late in our TOP-10?

The robot did not have enough funds to trade large volumes at the time. Therefore, the profit was small enough.

Do you have much experience in developing trading robots? 

No, I am a beginner. I became interested in Forex in 2012 after I visited a Forex seminar in Barnaul. I never planned to trade manually trying to grasp the automated trading from the very beginning. I mastered the basics of MQL5 language easily enough, as I had some experience working with C and C++. I used documentation and examples on mql5.com during my learning process. I have not tried real trading yet, as I want to test my skills trading on demo accounts first, as well as on your Championship, of course. When developing my robot, I decided to realize an idea concerning the interdependence of currency pairs which I found on one of the Forex web resources.

Does your devotion to Forex interfere with your personal and family life?

It interferes with my family life from Monday to Friday and supports my personal life at weekends (just kidding).

Of course, my hobby takes much time, but I think it's worth it, and my wife understands that. By the way, I want to thank her for her patience!

Beginners usually start from EURUSD. How did you manage to master such a "vicious" GBPJPY?

My robot is a trend following one and both GBP and JPY carry significant instability, especially considering Japan's huge national debt and unstable situation in the UK. Therefore, I decided that the probability of reliable trends at these currencies is high enough and chose GBPJPY. The Championship confirmed my guess.

So, are you also fond of the fundamental analysis?

Not particularly, but I follow the news and try to apply that in my trading activity.

Have you developed your trading robot from scratch or used some ready-made tools?

I used some publicly available examples from the web site, of course. However, I have considerably remade the initial ideas considering my own understanding of the market.

What kinds of strategies do you like most apart from the Championship ones and why?

I like trend following strategies (that is exactly the type I have implemented in my Championship robot). They are quite simple, most accessible and clear for me at the moment. Of course, I would make such a strategy less aggressive in real trading.

Have you tested your strategy on many symbols? What do you think about multicurrency trading robots?

Yes, I did. However, the results were not impressive. I am currently studying the multicurrency trading robots and I hope that I will be able to prepare one for the next Championship.

How long did it take to develop your Championship robot? 

About two months. Also, I had to spend one month for optimization. I didn't change the versions during the development.

Have you already decided what to do with your prize?

I will use a part of it to do some real trading. I have not decided yet what to do with the remaining part.

Have you received some experience while participating in the Championship?

Of course, the Championship experience is difficult to overestimate. Above all, it is a proof that you can succeed while using even a simple strategy. It is quite an inspiring experience for me and for other Participants.

Among other Participants, I would like to note FIFO who turned out to be a very worthy opponent capable of occupying the third position, as well as s75 who has a very interesting strategy. Of course, I want to congratulate the first and second winners - chuliweb and JPAlonso. They can enjoy their well-deserved victory.

What can you wish to other Championship Participants and Spectators?

I wish Spectators to become Participants and I also wish good success and profit in real trading to all the Participants. Just go ahead! Do not slow down!

Congratulations on your third place in the Automated Trading Championship 2012! We wish you success in everything you do! Thank you for the interview, Alexey.

I would also like to thank the Organizers and Sponsors of the Automated Trading Championship 2012!