A few questions about this site

C2
1

Hello everyone, just joined this site and have a few questions:

  • what are the factors to consider when targeting subscribers?
  • is there a form of ‘advertising’ that a trader can do to become more visible to investors?
  • is there a strict delineation between investors and traders here or is a large portion of the investors here actually other trading leaders propping each other up with subscriptions?

If I’m a software developer, is there a way I can provide services to someone who needs algo coding?

Thanks all!
Carpet H.

2

I’m 100% a subscriber and not a developer, but for my own searches for systems to subscribe to the most important criteria I look for are:

  1. Relatively smooth equity curve with a positive slope.

  2. At least a 9 month track record on C2, preferably longer (a long track record (many years) at C2 isn’t very common)

  3. Reasonable per-trade drawdowns. Download the .CSV files for a system and look at the profit per trade relative to the drawdown for each trade (rather than the single max drawdown % given on the system page). This can tell a lot about individual trade management.

  4. Reasonable monthly subscription fee … very important when trading multiple systems which IMO is the only way to play this game as most systems have C2 track records too short to risk placing too much money on any individual system.

  5. A strategy description that provides the basic philosophy of the system. Many vendors provide nothing at all in this space which I find very strange. So I look for this right away and put less weight on systems who provide no such information.

  6. A low “heart attack” index. I’ll sort the “Find a Strategy” results by this parameter (low to high) and generally favor a low value (though not always) even though it isn’t exactly clear how this number is calculated.

I can only offer comments on your first bullet point from the subscriber perspective, but performance is all that counts at the end of the day. If you can make money for people you’ll get subscribers, and if you can’t or the system is too wild and crazy you probably won’t have much luck.

1 Like
3

CarpetHooligan,

Please accept my humble apologies for attempting to make fun of your username. That playground type of behavior is inappropriate in this venue.

Welcome to C2. Your questions are interesting and important for new and veteran users alike. May I offer a developers perspective to answer your questions?

  • Consider subscribers and their trading accounts with the same care and caution that you think of when managing your own finances; actually use more prudence and caution when it comes to balancing reward vs. risk for others who may follow the trading system signals you intend to publish.

  • The best way to develop interest in your trading signals is to follow RandyMay2’s advice about what subscribers are looking for in a performance track record. It is all about good risk management and communications. Put your own money on the line in the form of a TOS certification if you have the resources to do so.

  • It is hard to imagine any/many developers propping each other up with subscriptions in a quid pro quo sort of way as the fees involved in publishing and subscribing to signals make that scenario a losing situation.

4

Programming or coding is much easier than developing trading systems that work satisfactorily in the markets in real-time. It definitely helps to have a good understanding of the markets and trading in order to understand how to properly develop, test, validate and qualify a production worthy trading system.

Inventory your skills along with your technical strengths and look for a partner to work with that has complimentary and different skills. There are online organizing sites such as meetup.com where you can find traders and investors who may be interested in co-developing algorithms. You also may want to consider looking into some freelance job boards for postings related to coding and trading.

Andrew

5

Hi Randy, thanks for you reply. I find the 9 month track record a bit disheartening. That’s a long time to pay fees to C2 before investors start taking interest. I’m wondering whether it’s reasonable to expect at least one or two investors to jump on board after a month or two (assuming solid daily performance of the strategy)? Is that common to see here on C2 or does it really take about 9 months before investors start showing up?

6

Hi Andrew,

Could you elaborate on the TOS certification, please? If I’m currently trading a strategy that’s sending signals to C2, doesn’t that mean that I’ve already got skin in the game? It seems that to AutoTrade it again, under TOS, would be redundant. What am I missing?

7

I was just giving my own preferences, but I expect there are enough subscribers around that some will jump in with little or no track record and others will want to see more of a demonstration that a system can be successful. And of course there are gamblers as well as less risk tolerant people who will have different amounts of money and different goals. With real money on the line though, I expect most people who are allocating enough money to justify the C2 fees as well as the subscription fees (which can easily reach $1K/month for a “portfolio of systems”, all autotraded), some sort of track record is needed.

Another point is that if you can show back testing results in something like Tradestation format or similar that might be a plus, even if not nearly as good as a verified C2 record (simply because there are many ways to either fake a backtest report, or have a flaw in the programming that shows good results but that don’t pan out in the real world). Finally, i believe there is some scheme where C2 can take broker data and verify some sort of prior record as part of the “TOS” designation. So that would show a longer track record on the system page here. But I don’t know the details of that (I’m a subscriber only) so you’d need to check with C2’s help system for details. Good luck!

8

RandyMay2 has a lot of good information on things to consider from a strategy subscribers’ perspective.

A strategy leader who puts his money on the line taking the same signals as subscribers gets the TOS certification.

There are certain restrictions about brokers, etc…

This also assumes that the strategy leader has enough liquid capital to trade it.

Andrew