Winning a Trading Competition in 2022

Video version of this blog: part1, part2, part3, part4, part5

In May 2022, Expert4x held a trading competition for owners of the Profit Retriever EA. The total prize pool was $4000 USD, and users can enter with DEMO accounts. Whattt?! You can win REAL money by trading a demo account? Fantastic! The rules were simple: Trade the Profit Retriever EA for a minimum of 5 consecutive weeks using the same strategy.

My plan was to optimise a bunch of forex currencies over the past year, pick the best settings, and run them on 20 demo accounts. I had a spare PC where I could run all 20 terminals 24×7. I expected many accounts to blow up, as I would be trading with very risky settings.

It took me 2 days to optimise a bunch of random currencies using tick data for the past year: EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCAD, EURJPY, GBPJPY, Gold, Sliver. The competition was about to start, so I stopped the optmisations, and took whatever tests that were already complete. For each currency, I picked an aggressive setting, and a conservative setting. GBPJPY didn’t perform well, so I took that one out, leaving 12 set files.

Next, I needed a broker that offered $10k demo accounts. Many had 20k or 50k accounts, so that limited my options. I found FBS which allows you to control your demo account funds. It took me 4 hours to create 20 demo FBS accounts, create 20 new fxblue accounts (for monitoring) and then load the set files onto each MT4 terminal. I let them run, and everytime an account blew up, I simply created a new demo account, and a new fxblue account, and restarted the EA.

Day 14

Alex made a video showing the leaders in the competition. Because I had a total of 18 entries, I was currently in 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th. You can tell because they all end in “pizza”. I didn’t want everyone to know I had so many, so I started ending some in “app”.

Day 21

So far, I’ve submitted 25 entries, and half of them blew up.

Alex posted a video showing the progress of the winners, as I’m currently in first place at 1544.8%. For this account, I was monitoring the competition, and saw one guy trade gold at one lot size on 200 pips. So I’m going to go crazy and do the same, but one same direction and one reverse direction on 4 SMA on a one minute chart.

Day 24

My winning account BLEW up! BOOM! 🙁

Day 30

My account started expiring. I didn’t realise FBS Demo accounts expire after 30 days. Which means ALL my efforts have been wasted. None of my accounts meet the 5 week minimum trading rule. Argggh! Angry and upset! I give up.

Day 55

Alex announced he was going to extend the competition by 63 days, because he wasn’t impressed with the competitor’s lack of creativity.

Hey! Maybe I can be that impressive competitor.

It’s given me the kick in the pants I need to get back in the game. So i’ve got 99 days before the competition ends. I’ve got 0 valid entries in the competition. My previous 33 entries were all invalid as they didn’t meet the 5 weeks trading rule. I’m starting back from scratch 55 days after the competition started. All good. let’s do this!

Let’s review the rules. Instead of blindly creating new accounts, let’s analyse why the accounts are blowing, and adjust the settings.

Also, optimization took days the last time, and hogged up my PC so I couldn’t play games. Ideally I would like to have a separate laptop dedicated to optimisation, but I don’t. So as I’m a member of the premium forum, I’m going to use the optimised set files provided by expert4x instead. I found in my first batch of results that I can’t use conservative realistic settings to win the competition. 80% return per annum just isn’t going to cut it. So we have to continue using crazy settings, and hope a few of them make it through 5 weeks. The plan is sill valid.

Next step is finding a broker that has accounts that last longer than 30 days. I remember Alex made a video on IG, saying they were a fanstastic demo account broker. OK, let’s create 20 IG terminals, install the profit retriever EA, create 20 new fxblue accounts, and make sure everything is running smoothly. 4 houts later…. ergh my eyeballs are killing me.

Day 84

I am currently 3rd, 6th, and 9th place in the competition

Day 131

I am currently 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 15th, 20th place.

10 days left

I’m still in first place at $64k profit.

1 week left

My current balance is 99k, but I have a floating loss of $-25k. I’m still in first place, but if the market starts trending massively, I will lose my position. I decided to protect my account, and close all trades, and monitor the competition. Second place is $15k under me, so I have a good solid lead.

Most of my accounts had blown up. I only have 4 accounts left. Now that my winning account is protected, I’m going to see if I can make some crazy trades to get the three other accounts up. I did some backtesting based on the past 3 days of trading, and try to get each account to make 60% in 3 days.

I read through the fine print, and noticed that the winner is based on the “last published equity”. So I don’t need my accounts to actually win. As long as only publish my results if my account balances go up. If I lose, then no one needs to know about it. I stopped publishing, and put on super risky settings.

2 days left

Second place winner is good. My initial $15k lead is now down to a $2k lead. I’ve been watching them closely, and they’ve been playing with different results, and not publishing. They’re using the same tactic I’m using! oh no!

My 3 accounts all blew up. I only have 1 account left!

1 day left

Oh no! I’m now in second place! I’m behind by 2k! I need my SINGLE last account to make at least 2k in order to get back at first place. And even worse, I have to go to a party…. I guess second place isn’t that bad…right?

8 hours left

Back from the party. Yay! My account is back at first place. I’m at $76k. I’m going to quickly publish, but let my account continue trading while I head off to bed. I hope second place person isn’t going to be sneaky while I sleep.