The opinions expressed in these forums do not represent those of C2, and any discussion of profit/loss
is not indicative of future performance or success.
There is a substantial risk of loss in trading. You should therefore carefully consider
whether such trading is suitable for you in light of your financial condition. You should read,
understand, and consider the Risk Disclosure Statement that is provided by your broker
before you consider trading. Most people who trade lose money.
Periodically, we update the broker list and commissions costs used to calculate returns of trading strategies. We are currently updating this data, which means you may notice some changes in returns for a strategy, depending on which broker commissions you choose to display.
Also, since C2 has standardized on an identical monthly AutoTrade fee for all brokers (and not just what we used to call “C2 Preferred,”) the monthly fees used when calculating hypothetical returns will also be adjusted across many brokers.
In summary, you are going to notice changes in returns-related data over the next few days, as equity and cost curves are recalculated in the background.
Strategy pages may also be slower to load since results may need to be generated on demand instead of pre-cached results being delivered.
I am just curious as to what appears to be an extra $99 charge you keep subtracting as a “fee” from the performance of my system. I understand this extra charge is something that is associated with C2’s use of the auto trading feature for IB subscribers, so why is it been subtracted from my system’s performance when it is on the “typical broker commission”?
I had hardly any DD on my system and now my monthly subscriber fee (which just kicked in days ago) plus this extra $99 charge (which I have no control over) has 3x my DD, which is making my DD appears to be as result of my system’s performance when it is indeed NOT the case.
i have a question about the application of fees to returns.
When a strategy rescales, is there any chance that you will rescale the subscription fee along with rescaling the trades? (I have no idea how hard this would be to do or whether this is even allowed under SEC regs.)
I plan to make my strategy public in the next few days. Because I hugely rescaled my strategy, I find that my maximum % DD is basically my subscription fee. The max DD occurs during a period when I was 100% in cash and thus had no losses on trading. If I set my sub fee at $82, my max DD is 14.6%. If I set my fee at $249, my max DD is 60.7%, again occurring while 100% in cash.
Matthew, thanks for doing all the work to make this site function. I further understand that there are winners and losers from any system of financial accounting.
The subscription fee that is applied to your strategy’s performance is applied as the final “adjustment” of the strategy’s raw equity curve, and the fee that is applied is the current subscription fee charged. This is a dynamic value. This means: if you change your subscription fee, your strategy’s prior history will change to reflect the current subscription fee you are charging.
Fine, I understand that…but shouldn’t the auto trade fee be associated with when you click on the drop menu for a particular subscriber like IB and not be included as part of the “typical broker commission” calculations?
No, because the “typical” user pays the AutoTrade fee.
Yes, yes, I understand that one can make a case that not all subscribers actually AutoTrade a strategy, and thus not all pay a fee.
And, yes, yes, I understand that many people (most?) actually AutoTrade more than one strategy – which means that the fixed monthly AutoTrade fee, when spread across multiple strategies followed, actually is less than what C2 displays.
But our goal, always, is to be more conservative rather than less when it comes to displaying hypothetical performance. I know that’s not always to the advantage of the Trade Leaders here at C2. But we want to make sure C2 continues to operate in a way that regulators accept.
That is great and all but again C2 is really misrepresenting my current system’s performance. C2 being conservative is not helping my case. Again, essentially my current max DD is based almost entirely on my sub fee (I guess my bad luck with my horrible timing on my sub anniversary day ) plus an autotrade charge that I have no control over and may not even be applicable to all subs.
Yes, I understand that. That’s what leads to my maximum DD being during a period when I was 100% in cash.
Alternatively, have you considered allowing someone to partially roll-back a rescaling (ie, rescale larger), at least if there are no subscribers whose positions would need adjustment?
Matt, are you making sure all older systems are also being “dinged” the $99 autotrade fee for EACH and EVERY month (retroactively) for each system since INCEPTION? This has to be done if you want to be fair and compare apples to apples with the newer systems by not just implementing and subtracting the $99 autotrade fee for only just the past couple of months or just for the beginning of this year (as a 1 year old system should be dinged approximately $1200 from its performance total and reflected in the stats and charts accordingly) but for the entirety of the system’s performance.
I’ve noticed some time ago that max drawdown value shown on the system page is connected to Typical commission scheme, and it doesn’t change (opposite to cumulative return value) when commission scheme is switched. I’ve already sent this question to help desk. They told me that this item is in the task list now,.
Are you going to connect max drawdown calculation to commission scheme in this round of updates?
No, not yet. The Max Drawdown stats will not change when you change your broker view. That is a feature I hope to implement in the future. (It’s super computationally expensive, which is why I’m not able to do it yet.)
In retrospect I regret starting my system with 25K. The system is designed to be conservative, and the choice to start with 25K was based on C2’s original policy of not including the autotrade fee, which at this level is almost 5% yearly. So, not all systems are impacted the same, unfortunately. The ones that suffer most are the ones that wanted to attract smaller accounts but try to responsible and respect people’s money. Perhaps C2 should extend a one-time option to scale up some systems. Otherwise, it’s just wasted effort.
@IoKo I absolutely agree. If I wasn´t in the process of shutting down my 10k system for other reasons I would certainly do so now. There is just no point in creating a small sized system anymore, period.
I dont understand all this complaining . Isnt that what happens in subscribers accounts with a small size ? You see the irony ? If your systems arent compatible with small accounts then by all means start a new model with a larger size , ie 50K for example . You cant start a system model with a small size then say these fees are eating my profits up . I think adding the auto trading fees to system models is the right thing to do .
Does new commission change DD?
My strategy is less than a month.
I have 47.6% return by current commission,and 10.3% maximum drawdown. If I use IB commission, my strategy is up 54.8%, but my DD is the same.
But in fact, at IB commission, my DD should be much lower.
