Reading last days posts on some forums, besides making me smile, rised a few thoughts, about Collective2 website and his aproach in trading business. Of course I speak more from a customer point of view than from a business point of view and so even though the curent aproach of Collective2 migh be good for its business it might not apear as a serious business from a serious trader point of view. Here is what I mean: nicknames are funny in a funny website, chat rooms, messenger or anywhere else where seriosity its not a must but definetly not here on Collective2 where playing could mean losing your house (nobody is that dumb I supose, but still theoretically this website is about real money and real life) and so allowing anyone with a nickname to open a tradingsystem makes the website look so childish and not a very trustful source of trading strategies. (looking around at 99% of the trading websites on the net all this trading business its just a joke and the biggest trick of last few centuries, starting with those that sell indicators and finishing with those that can not make money trading but they teach others how to do it, anyways…) Personally I would like a Collective2 website where to open a trading system as a vendor one would need a real name, a ID, a bank account and credit card to verify its name and so on so forth exactly as opening a real trading account. Using real verified names would not allow many scam around since it would be very hard for them to make another account every time when they screw up…a perfect world not possible you say, huh? yeah I know
Now of course, as I said, Im not sure that would be good for Collective2 business since there would not be many trading strategies around i supose.
The above is not in any way a criticism to Collective2, since I know very well that Collective2 gives all the tools for someone with a brain to diferentiate between what is just funny stuff and what could be a real deal in trading, its is merly a observation after reading a few very funny posts from a gvery funny wanna be serious trader and vendor, as I said in the begining of this post.
Please excuse possible mistakes, english is not my native language and I wrote this text out of boredoom in a non moving martket.
You make some good points Paul. For one, those forum posts you mention made me laugh as well 
There are two more serious points I’d like to add to your observations. The first is to do with verification of members. There have been discussions about this before. Collective2 is a very open democratic platform fostering a good community feel, albeit with one supreme leader who is more equal than others and has the power to close a forum 
This openness is important I think as it encourages discussion and self-regulation, as we saw the other day. It also encourages people to make their own decisions and be responsible for them which I think is a good thing.
However as you say, there is room to improve the reliability of information that people use to make their decisions. I think demanding strict identity checks is too restrictive for C2 but I’d like to see an optional “Verified Member” badge whereby a system vendor (or any member for that matter) can apply for verification by providing personal information, in confidence to C2 admin only of course. This could be quite strict (proof of credit card, proof of address, proof of ID for example) or go up in stages of strictness.
The second point concerns the distinction between “amateurs”, “chancers”, “professionals”… that kind of thing. Last year I made a bad call in my role as analyst when, despite some reservations I had, I did not recommend against clients investing with a particular private-client trading house. I will not go into the details here other than to say that the CEO, managers and traders all had impressive CVs from years of experience in big banks and other professional investment/trading institutions. Their trading record in this particular set-up was 18 months old, showing steady and good returns. This firm and it’s service was approved by the financial regulatory authorities.
Less than a year later (remember the flash-crash in April?) everyone invested with them was down 90% when the banks finally pulled the plug and shut down their trading platform.
The purpose of this story is to illustrate that not only trading websites etc. can promote amateur gamblers, but so can some professionals too! In the end, there is no substitute for personal diligence and responsibility with one’s own money.
Dean.
True, indeed Dean, the ideea with a verified member badge came to me also just after posting the above comentary and thinking about everything. On your second point, thats the biggest problem…lately 99% of the "professionals" are brokers, programmers or just plain scam and the very few that really make money from trading are very precautios in saying how they do it or the true nature of this business: simplicity, common sense, a real strong character, a little brain and arithmetics and a few more so very human…principles!? (if this word is good here). It took me a while to understand that the simpliest things are sometimes the hardest to acomplish exactly because they are so simple.
simplicity, common sense, a real strong character, a little brain and arithmetics and a few more so very human…principles!?
Exactly, couldn’t agree more! These were missing from the professional trading firm I mentioned.
The last one though is ambiguous; it could also include “fear, greed, hope, denial…” - those are also human characteristics
