Advanced Sync and other C2 issues

After only using the C2 for one month, I’ve noticed several issues that I wish C2 would address because they are causing REAL hypothetical losses.

  • C2 doesn’t handle competing strategies well. What I mean is that two different strategies placing trades for the same security, but one goes short and the other goes long. See next item…

  • C2 has turned off auto trading for two of my strategies when they have competing securities and has left them off. One strategy was had additional on going trades that I would have possibly missed or could have gone sideways if I didn’t catch this error. Synopsis of what happened. Strategy 1 opens long positions for both security A & B. Strategy 2 opens short position for security B. C2 shuts off Strategy 1 & 2. I notice that both Strategy 1 & 2 are shut off so I reactive both auto trade with current positions. Strategy 1 reopens security B. Later that evening, C2 turns off Strategy 2 again with an advanced sync filter set for security B (which i definitely want). Questions? What could have happened if Strategy 1 closed position A during that initial C2 auto trade turn off? It could have gone poorly.

  • C2 After turning on Strategy 2 again. C2 removed the advance sync option completely which had never trade security B filter applied. I really want that filter in place because I don’t want two different strategies competing with one another.

  • C2 Should allow users to filter which securities they want to trade or not trade with advanced sync options that are configurable through the advanced sync filter. C2 only allows you to remove a filter, but not add. The platform could be much better.

As a software engineer, I’m aware of the time and level of effort it takes to design, build, test, and release to production software. There has been quite a bit of time and effort put into this platform, but it’s not without its faults and limitations.

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I can’t address specifics regarding your personal brokerage account here in the forum.

If you have not yet done so, and you have a specific question about a specific trade, please write to help@collective2.com. Make sure you tell us what account your are talking about, and what strategy, and what trade (i.e. symbol, time, etc.) With these details in hand, we’ll be able to work with you to answer your questions or solve any problems.

Now, the one thing I do want to address here on the forums – because it is a broadly general point which is important – is that there should be no issue with “competing strategies,” as you call them. You can very definitely AutoTrade multiple strategies in one single broker account – even if they trade the same exact instruments – and even if they trade in opposite directions. In other words, AutoTrade handles just fine the scenario in which Strategy A goes long AAPL, and Strategy B goes short AAPL, at the same time.

(The technical details: in effect, the positions net out and your account “looks” temporarily flat; but when the positions unwind – that is – as the strategies each close their individual positions – the net profit/loss is mathematically identical to what you would have achieved had you traded both strategies in separate accounts.)

So I encourage you to bring your more specific questions to the help desk so we can either answer them right away or investigate on your behalf.

Matthew

I traded NFLX this morning and no subscribers autotraded it, was their a glitch this morning or is there limitations on stocks due to volatility?

Send specific details to help desk. Strategy you are talking about, long or short, etc.

Hi,

Some signals were not traded today. The cause has been identified and corrected. We apologize for the disruption.

A general FYI here and no need to open a help ticket on this but I experienced the same thing about 9:39 ET this morning with VIX Trader.

I saw a trade go off on the C2 dashboard to close out the position but nothing occurred in my IB account until some minutes later which I assume was auto sync kicking in at that time. Looking at the C2 trade record for VIX Trader today I don’t see any auto trade fills for the closing trade.

Wait, so parts of the orders went through while others did not? This could be a huge issue can’t it especially with options trading

I did a trade in QuantStat2 Futures and I’m getting reports from subs that they did NOT trade missing out on the $500 profit today.

This was answered by:

here is what happens to me:
Some signals were not traded since yesterday around noon until today 15:00.

The cause has been identified and corrected. We apologize for the disruption.
400$ profit is gone. and this happens to me twice now. The cost of trading is expensive as it is. Not credit for autotrading - nada… I specifically asked for it. Very nasty.

Well that can’t be helped, but if it entered you in a trade, and then didn’t signal to exit, thats what I’m worried about, if this is a possibility then subscribers should be made aware of it

don’t bet your farm on it. I believe anything can happen here. Noone will give u any guaranty. How about interface goes down for one reason or another. This will happen , but when they don’t exute normal trades and u see all those nice performance charts…Where is the truth in real execution noone knows. I’m very unhappy customer here.

Well if this is an issue, maybe there can be a way to immediately a max loss order along side the order, in the event something goes wrong, it would have to sent it as a GTC order, and then say a developer signals to exit. Would cancel that order and place the new order.

Maybe this is already possible?

But I can tell you that even if you have a autotrade setup and you missed out on positions, they aren’t going to credit you for that. One you didn’t put anything in the market, so they have no reason to credit you persay, maybe if you get a generous customer service rep, they might give some commission free trades, but that’s about it, and even that is hit or miss.

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If this is a possibility the whole signal transmitting process should be overhauled until ist’s finally stable.

If a developer trades volatility products (or leveraged instruments in general) and uses stop loss like me it’s absolutely essential that subscribers get out of the trade when I do, not 2 Minutes later. That makes a huge difference up to the point where subscribers lose even in the long run with following a winning strategy…

It really concerns me as a dev to read such comments every now and then. Makes me wonder if this site is actually able to support a sustainable signal providing business.

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Credit automation fees.
Look, I’m software analyst as well. This system is not tested at all. Look, at the dashboard total screwed up. Just from deployment this week I guess. In order for you to see what is happen on your account you have to take shovel and digg. You click on the Autotrade follow menu and see… whole list of menu opens and so on. Automation setup workflow was broken I missed few trades… but autotrading fees they charge very well.

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I hear ya, I’m a options day trader, I’m in and out of positions within minutes, my subscribers can’t and shouldn’t be affected by moments like this.

It’s one thing if they didn’t enter a position, granted yes it sucks, but it’s much better than a potential expiring worthless contract

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I like your proposal of the GTC order. Imho there should be an option to not only copy direct signals of a signal provider but also all his orders. That would be a work around so system latency would no longer be an issue (for systems with limit/stop orders). Or am I missing something?

Matthew, I get it, but I would like to have fine granular control over strategies and what I allow them to auto trade in my account. For one, I want Strategy A, who is mechanical, to trade whatever it wants and have C2 replicate it to my IB account. However, I don’t want Strategy B, who appears to be discretionary and against the trend, to trade contrary to Strategy A. It’s garbage.

For example, I’ve sent tickets and Help desk has been unable to address the issues stating it’s software driven. They always answer, but not exactly the right answers to very specific questions.

In the meantime, I’m taking notes of what C2 does well and what it doesn’t do well. Where there is chaos, there is always opportunity. I see room for a better mouse trap.

I’m talking of software issues here on the frond end. But I’m assuming that backend in the similar mess as well.

Guys -

Francis’ original post explaining what happened here was not sufficiently detailed, and I apologize for that.

We had a problem with our connection to IB during this morning. The problem lasted several hours. It is now fixed.

We’re looking into the exact ultimate cause of the problem right now.

But the main thing I want to stress, because some people asked about this, is that, now everything is back online, and C2 Auto-Sync should automatically restore all positions and trades to match the strategies you are following. (Assuming you have left AutoSync turned on, as is recommended.)

I know how frustrating this can be, particularly when you miss a potentially profitable trade. That’s why we try very hard to make our technology perfect. Alas, sometimes, we fail at that. But we’ll use today’s outage as a learning experience, and try to improve our processes and monitoring to prevent similar incidents from occurring.