FxStreet Trader of the Year 2008

The trading system that I mainly used was a range trade of the CHFJPY pair.  Rationale for trading this pair is that it has been very stable over the last year and when yen buying has been done due to risk aversion, franc buying has also taken place.  Risk was limited to 1 lot traded per $20,000 equity, being a fairly safe margin. My real account trades on the MT4 platform, and when I started the competition, mistakenly placed trades for CHFUSD, as most other platforms only let you trade USDCHF - I assumed that anything starting with CHF must be CHFJPY.  Those trades went down and I took them at a loss, since I didn't want to be in them anyway. Trading properly with lesson learned, I took trades buying 2 lots at 25 pip steps as CHFJPY went down, taking profit at 25 pips.  Trades were limited to long CHF trades to make sure that I was always with the positive carry position.  Progress was slow at first, then picked up slowly but surely as market volatility did its work.  After a couple of weeks, I figured that Nordmarkets weren't figuring in interest swaps and so I went both ways with my trades, spreading my range steps to 30 pips, as my 25 pip steps were turning over too fast for me to take care of properly (I was only able to manage my trades 1-2 times a day). The region between $100,000 and $150,000 (smoothly growing) was made range trading CHFJPY with 5 lot trades at 40 pip steps, as the 30 pip steps were still turning over too rapidly for me to watch properly.  The step to 7 lots traded per trade came at $150,000 and I decided again to only trade with the positive carry around $170,000.  When equity hit $200,000, I moved to 10 lots per trade and stayed there till the end of the competition. During the last six weeks of the competition, I was preparing for my final exams and moved my range steps to 50 pips so that I could trade less often, taking profit early occasionally, but still trading only 10 lots of CHF JPY.  At this stage, I also made a few EURUSD range trades using 5 lots at various steps, GBPUSD trades using 2 lots at similarly unspecified steps, and some AUD trades.  I closed most of these early, as they were largely speculative. Towards the end of the competition, all my range trades came to completion and I was able to close out all my positions a day before the end without taking any losing positions over the last 2 months of the competition.  Overall position was 7th and I was reasonably happy with the steady growth over the 3 months. Links to my account statement and purchase and sales sheet