Collective2's Official Position on Online "Identity" at C2

Scammers will be scammers, hedge funds blow up all the time and asking for more government protection is not the answer. Just do your own due diligence and stop chasing the last high flying strategy with 2 weeks of crazy returns and no real money on the line.

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i completely agree with “scammers will be scammers” and we are all adults here, and its NOT c2’s responsibility to protect your money or your brokerage balance. If they want to subscriber to high flyer or scammer strategy is their own fault. i get it, c2 is NOT a wealth management business and DONT offer financial advise. its the whole DOL/FINRA lingo, “Protect investor from them selves” does NOT comply with c2.

And I know there is no way to prevent scammers from making new user names or keep making high flying strategy that blow up every 6 months. If c2 currently offer the TOS verification requires a copy of an ID it shouldnt be that much more work to do to require the same for new strategy developers ?

I still strong agree we should create more incentive for TOS strategy or strategy with 2 yr+ or 5 yr track record. We dont reward the good strategy is big issue. now they split 60/40 with c2, next yr most likely its going to be 50/50. how can we keep good developer to stay around or reward the good strategies ?

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@OSUTIA, I agree with rewarding the developers that have long term track records. This may provide more incentive for good developers to stay.

Rewarding is one thing and does not cover the issue. C2 needs to come with logic to “redirect” subscribers interest to strategies with the long track record or TOS. Most likely these strategies will survive next market correction and C2 will not see a huge revenue drop due to money under C2 strategies being “withdrawn”.

I disagree. Maybe you misunderstood. Scrap the flat listing fee schedule in favor of a tiered percentage of subscription fee price. There has to be some way for conservative responsible developers to get a break in listing as it usually requires a much longer track record to reveal value and talent of system developer.

@TrendSurfer And with all breaks for developers, if subscribers will end-up in high-risk strategies like in past, what next? Market crash and higher fees? C2 cannot survive if the amount of money under C2 strategies umbrella will continue to go down.

Looks like the assumption that there is an unlimited amount of “new” subscribers money available is false.

I think the answer lies with the subscribers ! I feel the best way to decide on the strategy is not only look at their Gains/DD but to pay attention to the number of contracts traded. If the contracts go up/down in small amounts, that to me shows the stability of the system. If the contracts are jumping all over the place, stay away !!! I think couple of months record is fine to decide, provided there are decent number of trades in this period. THE ANSWER LIES IN THE TRACK RECORD ! Maybe C2 can highlight the inconsistency in the number of contracts traded to make the subscribers aware.

Nope, if a trader manages risk based on percentage of equity, he may open “contracts are jumping all over the place”.

Example for 100k account:

1 lot EUR/USD and SL 1000 pips = 1000
100 lots EUR/USD and SL 10 pips = 1000
Both 2 trades above has equal risk 1% of account (100k) but has big difference volume of open trade (contracts are jumping all over the place).

TOS certification strategies, a good long-term track records strategies or trader back under new names after blowing up people’s accounts… all of this could collapse one day. There is no guarantee.

As a strategy developer, I know the main reason that can blow up a strategy is its concept. If a strategy does not have a hard MM concept, it would blow up sooner or later.

No doubt, C2 is in trouble. More than anyone else, C2 knows, no investor - no C2. So C2 must change, other why C2 will be stuck in this issue forever.

How to change? In my opinion, C2 will help investors realize strategies with “hidden risks” in other words, realize strategies without the hard risk MM concept.

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The point I am trying to make here is the consistency, why would a developer have 10pip SL sometimes and 1000 SL other times.

If a TOS person blows up it’s account, I wouldn’t label them as a scammer !

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There is a way for trade leader to make it happen.

When you click Manage, you have “Auto-Constraints”. And there
trade leader can set decent “risk controls”.

Example,
“No single position may take more than % of strategy capital”.

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It depends on trading style. For 1% risk, traders may need 10 pips SL for scalping, M1 (and or news) position but may need 1000 pips SL for W1/MN position.

I agree.

This is one of the reasons why most of my money is invested with another social trading platform.
I’m not allowed to name that platform in the forum, but I can explain what they do differently.

  1. New strategies can be published anytime by anyone, and the performance will be fully visible.
    But it’s only possible to invest real money after weeks of testing time and only after at least 10 investors have expressed interest in investing money in that strategy. (only a few strategies reach that level)

  2. Before it will be available for investing, the trader has to provide an ID, and the real name will be fully visible forever (no pics)
    All closed strategies are visible, no strategy can be made private, no second account can be oppened.
    Still, losing money is possible there as well, but you always can see if the trader crashed in the past.

As an investor I understand that the other social platform takes more responsability to protect investors (where the money comes from) instead of protecting developers. So, it’s not an impossible task.
They only started in 2012, but why they have already 10 times more strategies than C2 and are still growing.

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I hope you are not talking about zulutrade which is a total joke.

Everybody agrees. So why do you let trade leaders hide track records?

Remember the canonical scam example about sending out 1,000 e-mails predicting the outcome of 1 game, then 500 to the winners predicting the outcome of the 2nd, etc.

This is just one example how C2 can be gamed. There are probably others, less obvious (and requiring less than 1,000 identities.)

Track records matter! Do you agree? Yes. Do we agree? Yes. Do we want to see them? Yes. Do you let us? No. (And do you have them? Yes.)

As you seem to be very firm when somebody posts an (allegedly) inaccurate fact, let me chip in here. The claim that G, FB and T have a hard time doing this is factually incorrect, inaccurate (false.) Probably you just made it up to make a point. This task is absolutely not “difficult, expensive, and ultimately imperfect.” Solutions are well known, widely published and can be had for free.

They have no problem whatsoever identifying any of their paying customers. (Mostly advertisers.) The same way as you wouldn’t have. Maybe --I just give you the benefit of doubt-- you are confusing non-paying users with paying customers. But that issue is not relevant at all as trade leaders are your paying customers.

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Let’s not forget they are also paying customers. You have these “bad actors” pay listing fee, reset fee and if they are get subscriber just for 3 months before their “reset” they split 50/50 with c2. Without knowing the numbers, they might be “A” clientele of their business.

Then you have you subscribers. They pay an autotrading fee each month and subscription fee if they sub to a strategy.

At last you have your long term developers or clone partners. Who pays a listing package or a big annual partnership fee. Then they split 60/40 of all the subscriptions. I assume this is prob the smallest % of clientele.

A lot of feedback if asking c2 to eliminate or put more restriction on these “bad actors” which it might be their largest source of revenue.

@jozsika I do have to agree with you with a lot of what you said about c2 has a double standard as they see fit. I raise the same point as you while back. But the whole going private then public then private again then reset later. The response I got was c2 don’t want to discourage new developer to join or test new ideas. When I hear that excuse I realize what a subscriber “I” vs what c2 had in mind is completely different. What their saying is subscribers with new MONEY should be a test subject for a “new” developer/trader or invest my real money to beta test a new strategy. That left my stomach a pretty gross feeling. Like in the real world, most investors won’t try any new fund or SMA unless you got 2 years of track record. But c2 allow any inexperienced developer or a new strategy OPEN for business and accept investors but they can hide and close shop temporarily at any time. That’s when I realize protecting my capital isn’t a big concern of c2. But keeping me paying a residuals monthly fee is their primary focus. There is NOTHING wrong with new deleoper or new strategies being tested on c2. I look at it was like an IPO situation. If a company is going IPO and accepting investors money you CANT hide your books anymore. Bad trade or made bad mistake you can’t click hide and reset at anytime. Have some responsibility of making bad decisions or bad trading with our REAL money.

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@OSUTIA, I think you correct on C2’s philosophy in this…Treat new strategies like IPO’s and proceed with caution.

Thus we do need to have continuous comments brought forth in these threads to weed out bad strategies or even scammers since I don’t believe anything will be done to prevent them.

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Thanks for this new feedback, @jozsika and @OSUTIA.

I know it can sometimes seem like companies make decisions based on short-term financial incentives, or that they value the interests of one set of customers over another, based on who pays more money.

While I can’t say that I always make the right decisions about product design or company direction, I can assure you that this is not how I make choices.

My goal is to build a great lasting company, a vibrant platform, and an awesome tool for investors who want to try to perform better with C2 than without. I think overall we’ve achieved much of that goal, but clearly there is still a lot of work to do.

The issues being raised in these forums are good ones, and they really boil down to how to make trade-offs between different possible product-design choices. While we may not agree on how I’ve chosen to weigh these trade-offs so far, I promise to keep an open mind and to continue to listen to the feedback from members of Collective2.

There’s always opportunity to listen, change, and improve.

Matthew

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That statement is not really applicable for c2 investors. Remember, Payoff Matrix was complaining about 50/50 split? He mentioned 50 or 70 subs on his systems, but after 9 months showing almost nothing in terms of profits.

I am more than sure that new systems bring c2 more or the same amount of money compare to long lasting conservative systems. And the reason is the only one - demand from investors for new systems. :slight_smile:

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