Certificates

Hi,



first of all I like collective2 as it works stable and most financial instruments are implemented so that it really looks very similar to the ‘real world’.

however I think there is one really big problem: In order to allow investors to use the model they have to fit the account size of the trading system.



In the meanwhile there are other signal providers who found out a solution for this: e.g. a German signal provider, is providing certificates that are exatly matching the trading system. So instead of opening an account and following the trades 1:1 you just buy a certificate that is traded at an exchange. the advantage is that you can start investing in a system by only investing e.g. $100.



I don’t want to recommend this other site as they don’t provide options at all that would be necessary for my system. However I think the solution with certificates is great. Many people asked me if it was possible to trade my system with a smaller account size… So is something similar planed for collective2?



Thanks



Christian

Christian:



When you set up AutoTrading, you can specify whatever “Scaling Percentage” you like. The only restriction, of course, is that certain instrument classes (futures, for example) can’t be traded at less than 1 contract unit. So the smallest trade available will be one futures contract (you can’t trade .01 contracts).



But other than this indivisibility of single units, there is nothing stopping you from trading a system at whatever scaling percentage you like (making the trades bigger or smaller than what appears in the C2 Model Account).



Finally, since my general policy is that I don’t provide free advertising and linking to competitors, I have removed the name/url of the site you mention. I know you meant no harm in including it, and I hope you’ll forgive my ham-fisted editing of your post.



Even so, my point above remains true: you can scale at any %.

Matthew,



thats exactly the problem. My system is about shorting options. So shorting 1 AAPL option e.g. requires about $60,000.

My system is good (currently about 40%/year). So what should I do in order to allow people trading it?



Christian



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For stock and option trading, we currently work with American brokers. American brokers require this margin amount for naked short options.



I know there has been interest by non-USA customers in our offering autotrading for CFDs, and we are investigating that. The problem is that the majority of the C2 users are US persons, and our government does not allow us to trade CFDs.



So for now, we generally base margin assumptions on US broker / exchange requirements.



well, trading on margin and having cash on your account are two different things. Actually you COULD trade my system with only having a $30,000 account because margin requirements are currently only about $25,000.

However what happens if there is the next crash? So actually I would not sleep well then.

Regarding CFDs I would never trade them. Trading CFDs is somewhat similar to trading on margin. However additional fees arise.



So I was not asking for CFDs. What I meant is that you could find a partner providing a derivative contract. This derivative contract is providing the performance of the trading system and is traded on an exchange. So instead of investing in my trading system ‘option driven value investing’ you would order this derivative contract and it would mirror the performance. So in case ‘option driven value investing’ is +10% then the derivative contract is also +10%. This is what the German signal provider does. Its similar to an investment fund.



Christian



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