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Algorithm disqualified for Quantopian's shifting goal posts
André Pajak
edited
Contest

I just got the following email from Q's no-reply address:

Your paper trading entry in the Quantopian Open was disqualified with the high-level message Contest base capital changed from $100K to $1M (https://www.quantopian.com/posts/contest-12-rules-changes-more-entries-more-winners-$1m-capital-base).

You are welcome to fix the code in the IDE and then submit an updated version to the contest. You can check the status of all your Open entries by viewing the My Algorithms page. If you have any questions, you can reach out to us anytime!

Thanks,
Quantopian

The algorithm in question was submitted on Nov. 2nd, with $100,000 initial capital as required by the contest rules then in effect. It was not automatically resubmitted to the Dec.'15-May'16 contest. The $1m capitalization rule was announced on or about Nov. 20th, to be effective in the December and following contests. Why then was my algorithm disqualified for not adhering to a rule I had no way of knowing about before the Nov. 2nd submission deadline?

It looks like my algorithm was disqualified because Quantopian shifted the goal posts.

3 responses
Jamie McCorriston

Hi André,

I apologize for any confusion that the email you received may have caused, let me do my best to clarify everything here:

There were a few submissions that were submitted on Nov. 1st and Nov. 2nd that were incorrectly disqualified today with the same message that you received. The mistakenly disqualified submissions have been requalified and their owners have been notified.

I spent some time investigating as to why yours was disqualified, and while the changed capital base does not apply to your algo, it seems that it was submitted after the Nov. 2nd 9:30AM deadline of Contest 11. Unfortunately, this means that your algo will have to remain disqualified from that contest. We do our best to apply the same rules to everyone who enters the contest, so we are strict about deadline times.

Regarding your comment about your algorithm not being submitted to the new contest, in the forum post, we announced that no submissions entered prior to November 20th would be rolled over to the new contest beginning Dec. 1st.

I apologize for how late this notification was sent to you, as well as for the fact that you received the wrong message. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask either by replying here, or by emailing in to [email protected].

Disclaimer

The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian. In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.

André Pajak

Jamie,

As of 4:12pm, I still haven't received notice of any rectification, and the algorithm was still listed as disqualified.

It's possible it was submitted a few minutes after 9:30am on Nov. 2nd, but definitely before 9:45. The UI confirmed the submission, said nothing about missing the deadline, and the algorithm was marked "Contest" in my algorithm list. Based on that, I was under the impression for more than a month that it was accepted as submitted on time, perhaps because contest algorithms run on data delayed by 15 minutes. Further, it was never listed on the December contest leaderboard - I didn't submit it this month, and, as announced, it wasn't automatically resubmitted. So why, if its only fault is late submission, was it disqualified five weeks later with a message referring not to lateness but a contest rule that doesn't apply it because it only runs in the November contest?

André Pajak

I see now that another of my algorithms, https://www.quantopian.com/live_algorithms/565db2ea4db4fbc28f000081, was silently accepted on Dec. 1st, is marked "Contest" at https://www.quantopian.com/algorithms , but is not listed on the leaderboard at https://www.quantopian.com/leaderboard/12 .

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The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian.

In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.