I’ve mentioned some of these before I think, but here are some suggestions for the trade status pages:
Personally, instead of the current tabbed interface, Id like to see all systems on a single page, split into sections.
Color code the positions, green for long, pink for short.
Include pending orders in the trade status, in a separate section - that way I can manually exclude or alter some trades, before they are filled. At the moment, I can’t do anything until positions are actually opened, and If I want to alter them at that point, I incur fees and possibly trading losses.
Show 0 quantity positions. For example, I want to close a position early and take profits. The system holds the position, and later, I change my mind and want to re-join the system in the open position. There’s no way to “add more” to the position, because it’s no longer listed in trade status. It should be listed with quantity 0.
In fact, on this last point of trying to re-join a system’s open position after you have manually closed the trade early;
I tried to “hack” this, by deleting autotrading for the system, and then re-adding autotrade permission. My idea was that c2 would then sync my broker to the current system status (which has an open trade), and voila, I would get a market order or something to open the position at my broker.
No such luck. Perhaps c2 remembers that you closed a position from before and keeps this information across “activations” of autotrading. More likely, the market is closed, and c2 is simply doing nothing until it opens. It would be great if it would tell me which.
So another suggestion, include a “trading hours” column, color-coded with market open/closed flag with each position.
Include an “in sync”, “out of sync” flag for each system.
And another idea for the Trade Status page, in addition to the excellent ideas above:
Why not show in it the trades ALREADY CLOSED by the vendors? As MANY people in this forum have already pointed out, once a trade is closed it disappears from view, and good look locating it later. You have to go to each system home page, and then identify and match the ones that actually applied to you (since some systems issue signals for stocks, forex, and futures all together, and some brokers discard the signals they can’t convert to a trade, not all trades get executed. Ex. a FX broker won’t use stock signals & vice-versa.) For that you may need a report from your broker, which will have the TRADE ID number BUT NOT THE SYSTEM that originated it!
My idea is that in this Trade Status page a C2 “sub” of systems would have a compilation of all the trades that were executed by the systems that he/she subscribes to - CURRENT & PAST, and with RESULTS, by system and by borker account, therefore allowing one to know what is happening AND what happened in his autotraded account(s).
THAT is quite obviously every sub’s main need (to know who is doing what to his money), and so in essence, what I am suggesting is a centralized “SUBSCRIBER’s PAGE”, as elaborate as the system pages, and containing all the info pertaining to the subscriber. And, as with the system pages, why not give it an individual URL, so the SUB can go directly there?
Now, if the goal of C2 it to increase page views then it would be better to force each sub (x) to visit every system page (x) every day, to try to make sense of who made or lost him money - AS IT IS DONE TODAY!
However, if C2 ownership is interested in facilitating the use of the site by subs and providing CLARITY to them about what systems are performing (as I truly believe is the case, given the excellent info in the system pages), then a single, centralized SUB’s page containing what a subscriber needs to keep track of the systems he/she follows is a MUST.
In it, all the ideas above can be incorporated and much more, specially in terms of REPORTS comparing systems (there is always one that is not as good as the others and need to be culled off - however which one?). What about a daily report, with the trades each system opened/closed, and their $ results? The options are endless, and I am sure many of you can chime in with your needs and ideas - mine is: I NEED MY SUB’s PAGE!
