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The C2PlatformTransmit.exe which mirrored the trades to the Collective2 account generally functioned satisfactorily until recently. (It did need to be removed, reloaded and restarted on several occasions as the source account and Collective2 strategy were not in Synch)
The previous 2 days have shown major inconsistencies between ALL the trades sent and the trades received and reported by Collective2.
Obviously there is going to be some variation in spreads between brokers but unlikely to this extent. We are using a Live/Real account as the source account being copied from so the prices reflect what could reasonably be expected from standard broker executions.
It appears there are either some latency/connectivity issues as well as possible mis-pricings.
Another concern is that the C2PlatformTransmit .exe has not been updated since 2020 whilst the MT4 platform has had several major updates to the code library/functionality as well as the architecture so it could simply now just be incompatible. It is a concern that I see trades on Collective2 still open, sometimes for many minutes, whilst closed on the account being copied from. This would suggest something more serious than just latency issues.
I have halted all trading until this is resolved as I see that there are ‘real-life’ brokerage accounts receiving the trades. It also appears that their brokers fills are being used to determine the strategy’s equity curve which is a concern if their brokers fills are causing the issue with extremely pessimistic fills which don’t reflect the general market mid/average/consensus price.
It also appears that their brokers fills are being used to determine the strategy’s equity curve which is a concern
That’s the rule here in the US. We must and do report the actual fills that your actual subscribers receive in their real life accounts, not some dream-land hypothetical result. Now, if there’s an actual problem where due to broker error a fill is massively delayed or incorrect, we should not include that in results.
Please report to the help desk the specific signal ids you think were incorrectly priced, if you haven’t do so already. Again, however, I need to remind you that if the fill prices reflect what your customers received in their accounts, that is what C2 reports as a matter of policy.
Please report the specific signals that your strategy generated in MT4 which were still open on C2 “sometimes for many minutes.” If that is correct that must be investigated (and hopefully solved) immediately.
I totally agree that hypothetical results shouldn’t be used to over-ride reality based fills to create a dream-land result, however the source account is a REAL life account (as are 30+ other accounts also receiving the trades).
C2 = STO .89576 then BTC 0.89580 which is -.4 pip loss
Source: STO .89589 then BTC .89555 which is +3.4 pip gain
Source has 0.45 pip RT comm (not sure if C2 is all in px) BUT after comm source makes approx. 3 pips whereas all in C2 has lost 0.4 pips PX difference on PNL = 3.4 pips
if commission included on source, pnl diff = approx. 3 pips
RE the SEC Reporting Rules: I think important to consider the fact that retail forex is an Over The Counter (OTC) product vs a US based Exchange Traded product which has a single source of truth regarding the prices. As such you are allowing retail forex brokers (eg IG, which had a spread >20X greater than the other 5 major brokers that we use) to determine the quality of a strategy.
Would it not be more in accordance with the SEC reporting rules which are designed to enforce transparency and fairness to use a mid-price/average price from a basket of ‘reasonably’ priced brokers? The IG Bid/Ask is so extreme that it is actually outside the respective high/low of the bar. We cannot in good conscience accept subscribers if they are using brokers with spreads 20X greater than that which is the industry average. They will never be profitable copying our strategy (or likely any others where the frequency of trading is greater than daily) and our strategy equity curve on Collective2 (vs our live accounts) will head south rapidly as it only reflects their fills.
Regarding the delays/non-synching of Collective2 target account with our MT4 source account. (Speaking as someone who has developed in MT4/5 for 15+ years) The C2PlatformTransmit is an executable written in metaquotes MQL language with a .dll presumably built in C++ or C#. It appears to check at regular intervals (1sec?) whether the MT4 terminal account (source) is in synch with the Collective2 target account/server. I suggest you ask your coder to investigate whether the 2020 .exe uses the native Timer() function - it doesn’t work properly anymore, not since the numerous aforementioned MT4 code updates. It is recommended to use custom Time functions or Event driven functions instead.(my apologies for the tech-speak but we’ve also endured many years of torment keeping abreast of the Metaquotes code idiosyncrasies)
RE: possible latency issues
It would be very useful for reporting/post-trade analytics to have the trade times on your portal include the seconds. Currently it only displays minutes so is impossible to ascertain where in the minute bar the trade was received/executed at your end. Obviously a lot of price changes can occur in a minute. We can however see down to the millisecond from our side.
I have asked my colleague Lorant to reach out to you and get exact details about which trades happened in your MT4 account but were seemingly slow to replicate at C2. Once we have specific data, we can analyze and fix as needed.
We publish the VWAP fill prices of all brokers that work with us. We can’t ignore some brokers’ fills. For USA traders, in addition to IG we also support StoneX forex, so perhaps as you get subscribers who use StoneX, you’ll see spreads more in line with expectations.
After Lorant reaches out and gets more information about slow fills, we’ll know more.
