Contest Model

Dukascopy JForex Strategy Contest is a forex competition between participants using DEMO accounts for automated trading. Special contest rules are designed to make the competition fair and challenging at the same time. This contest is a perfect choice for those who are learning to program trading strategies with the JForex platform.

The ranking of the participants is obtained through a summary of their positive trading performance, maximum decline of Equity (DrawDown) and expert evaluation. The participants submit the strategy source files to the remote server that runs strategies non-stop during the contest month. At his own discretion, the author of a strategy has the right to disclose the code script in order to achieve higher rating in the contest. The contestant can describe the strategy algorithm and comment on its performance on the personal blog. Dukascopy Forex Community members are offered to read, analyse and evaluate strategies by rating or commenting on them.

The Dukascopy JForex Strategy Contest is conducted regularly on a monthly basis with the total monthly prize fund of 5 000$ to be shared among the winners.

Registration Rules

1. The JForex Strategy Contest ('Contest') is held by Dukascopy ('Dukascopy') on DEMO accounts for JForex strategies on a regular monthly basis. Anyone who wants to take part in the Contest (individually a 'Participant' or collectively 'Participants') must register following the rules below.
2. For each respective month, registration opens on the 1st day of the previous month and remains available until the 10th day of that month. For example, registration for January 2011 is opened from 01.01.2011 till 10.01.2011
3. Only persons aged 18 or over are eligible to apply for a registration in the Contest.
4. Participants shall provide true information at registration. If a Participant becomes eligible for any prize, information provided upon registration will be used to initiate the procedure for opening of a live account with Dukascopy in the name of the relevant Participant. Should information be false, inaccurate or incomplete, Dukascopy may declare the participation in the Contest void at any time at its sole discretion.
5. Participants acknowledge and agree that their registration data are not covered by confidentiality whether or not Participants already have a live account with Dukascopy or intend / need to open such live account in the future. Consequently, Participants waive expressly the benefit of Swiss Banking Secrecy and release Dukascopy from any liability in that respect in the frame of the Contest.
6. Participants acknowledge and accept that, in case they are awarded with a prize by Dukascopy, they may be asked to participate in promotional events, interviews, public announcements in connection with the Contest and that Dukascopy may make public use of their names, trading history and references. Consequently, participants waive expressly the benefit of Swiss banking secrecy and release Dukascopy from any liability in that respect.
7. Participants acknowledge and agree that should they decline Dukascopy's request to participate in above-mentioned promotional events, Dukascopy has the right to disqualify such Participants and to give the respective prize to other participants.
8. Among other, multiple registrations under the same or different IP addresses and names, and/or use of proxy servers may result in Participant's disqualification.

Trading Rules

1. Contest accounts are registered with an initial deposit of USD 100 000.
2. Unless specified otherwise, terms and conditions commonly applicable to trading via Dukascopy at the time of the Contest shall also apply to trading within the framework of the Contest (for information purposes only, as of September 1st 2015 those include: 52 currency pairs available for trading, account leverage 1:100, minimal size of one trade 1000, margin cut level of exposure 200%, end-of-week leverage (1:30) each Friday at 18:00 GMT).
3. Participant uploads the strategy source file to the remote server on the profile page. The remote server will compile the source file, start the strategy and keep it running during the contest month. The strategy will not be submitted to the remote server if the compilation fails.
4. Participants acknowledge and agree that Dukascopy is not liable in case of any malfunctions, exceptions, programming bugs of the strategy and that increased CPU and memory usage will result in termination of the strategy.
5. Trading requirements to the positions are as follows:
   1. The total amount of positions opened during the Contest must be at least 20.
   2. The maximum amount of simultaneously opened positions is 1. Any further requests to open a new position will be rejected by the platform.
   3. Any profitable trades executed with a similar time and price but with different directions within two or more Contest accounts will be cancelled. These trades will be removed even if the Contest accounts are registered with different names and IP addresses. If the percentage of suspicious trades is considered high, it may result in a disqualification of the relevant Participants.
   4. Dukascopy reserves the right to cancel any trade which is made with a purpose to circumvent the Contest rules or to evade a particular rule with an intention to get an unfair advantage over other Participants.
6. Multiple order resubmissions are strongly prohibited and might result in disqualification. The trading script of the strategy must include the validation on free margin and amount of simultaneously opened positions.
7. Margin call trades incurred due to overexposure on a Contest account (e.g. use of more 200% leverage) will result in automatic liquidation of all existing open positions.
8. At the end of the contest all open positions will be automatically liquidated.

Programming Rules

1. Before submitting the strategy to the remote server, Participant has to verify that the strategy can be compiled without errors.
2. Participants are not allowed to use external files (DLL, JAR, etc). Only custom indicators implemented inside the strategy can be used.
3. Dukascopy expects Participants to adhere to the following list of recommendations:
   1. The strategy algorithm has to be symmetrical for opening long and short positions.
   2. It is strongly discouraged to include built-in forecasts, hardcoded prices targets.
   3. It is strongly prohibited to switch the strategy into 'hibernate mode', i.e. lower trading volume at certain equity levels, set amount calculation by decreasing formula, decrease trading volume by code update or anything else that can be seen as intentional retention of trading.
   4. The strategy must be written in accordance with Java Code Conventions. All comments have to be provided in English.
   5. Participants are not allowed to include personal contact details (names, phone numbers, emails, and web links) in the script of the strategy.
4. Visual JForex Programming Rules:
   1. Participant's strategy and components of the strategy must not be based on a strategy component that is developed by a 3rd party.
   2. Logical blocks have to be arranged in a readable order.
   3. Before submitting the strategy to the remote server, Participant has to verify that the strategy can be tested without errors.
   4. Strategy has to be deployed from Visual JForex (Compiler -> Contest).
   5. After adding a visual strategy to the list, the strategy has to be launched from 'Contest profile' page.
5. The subscription to instruments must be provided in onStart method. By default, Remote Server is not subscribing the strategy to any instruments. Pleas see Recommendations for programming tips.
6. Participants can upload unlimited number of strategies and its versions to the Contest account. Participant must activate one of uploaded strategies in order to participate in the Contest. The activated strategy cannot be changed but can be upgraded one time to a newer version during the Contest month.

Ranking Calculation Rules

Each month winners' selection will be evaluated by four parameters:

1. Performance - real increase of capital. Maximum 200 points.
2. Drawdown - maximum decrease of capital in percents. Maximum 50 points (0 percent drawdown).
3. Strategy Publication Bonus
   1. Participants who are copyright holders of their strategies are rewarded with additional bonus points for the strategy publication at the beginning or during the Contest month.
   2. In the case when the strategy code is disclosed, the bonus points are calculated according to the following formula:
      Bonus Points = remaining days till the end of month X 1 point + 5 points
   3. If the strategy is disclosed on the last day of the contest, Participant receives 5 points as the minimum bonus.
   4. Strategies which code was generated in Visual JForex would not be eligible for bonus points. To get that bonus strategy has to be uploaded directly from Visual JForex -> Compiler -> Contest. Other manually coded strategies will get bonuses as usual.
   5. Participants who produced copies or reproductions of a strategy are not eligible for bonus popularity points. The strategy is considered copied if a substantial part of the algorithm (at least 90 percent of the script) resembles another strategy. The author of the strategy and other participants may complete copyright claims by providing information about code snippets that have been copied and a reference to the original strategy.
      
      After reviewing copyright claims which are submitted during a month, Dukascopy may remove the bonus points from the participant if the copyright claim revealed that the strategy has been copied.

Prizes and Awarding Rules

1. Only participants with a real positive increase in capital can be traded as competitive candidates.
2. Competitor's strategy must be detailed in order to receive the prize won in the competition. This means that a description of trading logic, indicators, settings and other necessary information should be present in the strategy description.
3. The total prize of $5,000 will be split among the 15 winners of the contest as follows:
   • 1^st place - 1500 USD
   • 2^nd-3^rd places - 750 USD
   • 4^th-6^th places - 300 USD
   • 7^th-10^th places - 150 USD
   • 11^th-15^th places - 100 USD
4. Winners can withdraw their cash prizes from their live sub-account after meeting the minimum wagering requirements. These requirements exist at $2.5 million per $100 won in the contest. Expressed differently:
   • 1^st place - 37.5 million USD
   • 2^nd-3^rd place - 18.75 million USD
   • 4^th-6^th places - 7.5 million USD
   • 7^th-10^th places - 3.75 million USD
   • 11^th-15^th places - 2.5 million USD
5. Top-3 position winners are required to wright an article in their blog. Article is open-format and users have the opportunity of presenting the trading strategies and principles that lead them to success in the particular contest.
   
   Article is to be published within one calendar month after the end of the contest month. It has to be written in English, minimum 1500 characters (220 words) and contain at least 3 pictures.
   
6. Participants are allowed to withdraw funds in full only when there are no blocked prizes on the account. Profit can only be withdrawn when there are no blocked prizes on the account.
   
   If there are both blocked and unblocked prizes:
   • participants are only allowed to withdraw the sum of unblocked prizes;
   • only the positive difference between equity and sum of blocked funds can be withdrawn;
   • the sum of withdrawn funds can't exceed the sum of unblocked funds.

7. Prize funds will be credited to the participant's trading sub-account which is not associated with a Business Introducer and is held in the participant's name.

8. If the participant does not have a Dukascopy live account, they should open a live account online in the usual way. Should the participant not be eligible for a live account, Dukascopy reserves the right to revoke the cash prize.

9. Prizes can only be credited to accounts that are not linked to a Business Introducer. Should it be necessary, a new sub-account which is not linked to a Business Introducer will be opened by Dukascopy and the price will be credited to this sub-account.

10. Should a participant already have a live account but not yet have a sub-account opened, Dukascopy will open such an account on behalf of the participant and credit the prize in the participant's base currency to that sub-account.

11. Unless otherwise previously instructed in writing by the participant, Dukascopy will convert the prize into the base currency of the sub-account to which the prize is to be credited, using the given rules. Such conversion is subject to the rules published on the Dukascopy website apparent fees.

12. Each winner of a prize must give their consent for the source code of their strategy to be published by Dukascopy. If this consent is not given, the price of the corresponding participant will be reduced by 50%.

13. Should the entrant refuse to participate in any promotional events, interviews, public announcements related to the Contest, Dukascopy has the right to disqualify that entrant and may award the relevant prize to another entrant.

Fair Play

1. Participants acknowledge and agree to make efforts to respect the principles of Fair Play.
2. Participants must refrain from any dishonest and unfair conduct even if these activities are not fully described within the framework of the Contest rules.
3. Such activities include, but are not limited to:
   • Registration of persons that are directly or indirectly related to other Participant
   • Various team tactics that include consolidation of Participants into a group with a purpose to get a statistical advantage on one of the accounts
   • Trading in opposite directions within one or more accounts
   • Spamming in private messages and comments
   • Any kind of manipulations with popularity points and other statistics
   • Other activities used to get an unfair advantage over other Participants

Strategy Disclosure Policy

Publication of a Participant's strategy implies a distribution of its copies to the general public with the consent of its author. By authorizing the publication of the strategy script on Dukascopy's website, the Participants are not deemed to waive any of their copyrights or other intellectual property rights related to the strategy. Participant acknowledges and accepts not to make any financial claims against Dukascopy or any third parties who disseminate or use strategies published on Dukascopy's website or other web resources. Participants acknowledge and agree that they shall not be able or even allowed to control, limit and influence the amount of copies of strategy scripts distributed or made available by Dukascopy.

Other rules and policies

1. Dukascopy reserves the right to disqualify a Participant without prior notice and at any time and at its sole discretion.
2. Dukascopy reserves the right to change the Contest rules, requirements and awards without prior notice and at any time and at its sole discretion.
3. Dukascopy reserves the right to use any kind of information posted by Participants within the framework of the Contest for its own purposes without prior coordination and approval from the authors. These purposes may include any kind of promotional activities or publicity campaigns, statistics collection etc.
4. Dukascopy prevents the use of its JForex Strategy Contest webpages for promotion of money management activities.

For feedback, questions and comments please send a message.

Code of Conduct

Be reasonable with the posted content

We expect that the contestants do themselves have an understanding of the social "taboo" themes not tolerated on any respectful website or Internet resource. This affects not only the content posted for the various contests but also the comments and even the private messages.

Please take these rules seriously. Dukascopy Bank previses participants from trying to look for loopholes or trying to lawyer a way around the guidelines. Sticking to the rules is in the interest of the contestant himself, as any violations might result into deleting the content, disqualifying contestant from the competition or even a permanent ban on the resource.

The "DON'Ts" of Dukascopy Community (primarily,comments)

Spam
Sending the unsolicited bulk messages is strictly forbidden. This includes not only the advertising of the products or services of the 3^rd parties but also the aggressive promotion of any contestant's profile. This means that any comments such as "Visit my profile" are not tolerable.

Flood
Posting lots of similar comments with any purpose or sending messages is strictly forbidden.

Senseless comments
Publication of senseless comments (such as "good day" , "nice trade", "good luck!" ) that are only intended to promote participant's profile (by inflating the commentaries rating) is not tolerated. Such comments will be deleted. In some cases, the violation might result into blocking the user's possibility to post comments.

Harassment or threats
Any materials containing obscene exclamations, insults, threats or any other offensive remarks will be deleted. Systematic violations might result into a permanent ban.

Pornographic or sexually explicit content
Publication of such content, including links to such materials, will result into a permanent ban.

Nazism, racism or any other discriminatory statements
Publication of such materials will result in a permanent ban.

Malicious software
Posting any link to viruses, Trojans, worms, time bombs, malicious code or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept, or expropriate any system, data, or personal information in or connected to Dukascopy FX Community, will result into a permanent ban.

Trolling
What is trolling? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
The "trolls" will be disqualified from the contest and/or blocked temporarily or permanently.

Shocking & disgusting content
Publication of such materials in any kind might result into a ban.

Dukascopy reserves the right to disqualify a Participant, to change the Contest rules, requirements and awards, without prior notice and at any time and at its sole discretion.