I have a number of active trading strategies on Collective2, all in profit. In the case of Neural Stark, I had two big draw downs, these drawdowns did not last that long (less than a month) and the strategy in both cases recovered quickly and made further gains. Since then we have put in place some further rules and now we see a smooth return with no shocking moments. I could go into detail why these two incidents happened but there is something much more meaningful behind these strategies and what I find frustrating is no one seems to understand a typical futures strategy. I had some comments which indicated that most investors on here at not familiar with futures. What I also have noticed is people keep jumping on and off the strategies at the wrong time and so no one is really is taking advantage of these strategies on a long term basis, I am not sure what to do but I will just keep going. One thing I am tempted to do is remove the free trial as I don’t get paying customers anyway. I also don’t think many investors understand futures strategies and what to expect. Anyone else having these issues?
Hi Robert.
I think is understandable than if potential suscribers see big drawdowns don´t suscribe.
Each one has his own psicological DD level, the mine is about 30%, not more. This is not leaving to taking advantage of long term, simply I dont like to incur in these risk levels, isn´t necessary.
Also you say than investors don´t understand futures strategies, but yourself are not suscribed to your own strategies. How you hope people belive in a strategy if the manager doen´t employ it?
I think you should consider this points, but only is a oppinion.
Thanks to share your experience.
Regards,
Andrés.
Subscribers tend to subscribe and quit at the wrong times the same way investors tend to buy and sell stocks/funds at the wrong times. Human nature is at odds with what works in the markets. Also free trials attract a lot of subscribe-then-quit-at-end-of-free-trial activity.
Been looking at some of your strategies now.
This is my view. You trade many markets.
And, personally I agree that is a good thing.
But did you consider that many people don’t like Wheat, or Natural Gas, Coffee?
Other factor is that some of them are on ICE exchange, and some people have to pay for each exchange data feed, depending on broker, and in the end of month it is a nice amount to pay.
Why don’t have one strategy that is only trading ES?
Thank you for your comments Andres. I trade the same opportunities and will look into linking my account. The point I was trying to make is futures strategies are generally more volatile and I have worked hard to ensure we do not get any more drawdowns like we did last year H1, yet no one comes back. Such a shame but I am not sure what else to do but keep going and prove the system further.
Dave, thanks for your comments. So true and I did like your first post so I cancelled my free trials. Its hard to watch people take advantage so it makes me feel better. Thank you.
MatejGlavas, it is a good thing to trade many markest to a) avoid sideways markets and b) as my system follows 30= markets like an eye in the sky, its the only way to take advantage of correlations. Its name is the Intelliscan (ask if you want more info) and it allows me to identify favourable conditions. You have to have your fingers in multiple pots. I really appreciate your comments on Wheat, Coffee and I think I will only stick to trading these in my commodities strategy and then rename one only to trade fx and indices. The other can be a master strategy for people who like both. Thank you
Common rule for subs - expect dds worse than historical dds. Independently of futures, stocks or options trading. The way you are trading is not scalable down well. With 100% scaling, historical dds around 39k will bring subs to margin call on 50k account.
You are doing good since last July, but I really doubt that you will find a lot of subscribers for your Neural Stark strategy. With freshly established strategy without 50%+ dds and same performance I think in half of the year you’ll get your first subs.
AndreyBlinkov,
Thank you for your comments. I have another strategy Neural stark 2 which has performed fairly flat (made around 7% for the first 12 months). Its DD is -4.5% approx. I can switch the strategy onto this one and use the same parameters as Neural Stark. Your comments are completely right and there is no use trying to convince people when they are clearly concerned about drawdowns. Citadel has DD of -14% and has had more interest and is up around 11%.
The other thing happening is a lot of strategies are simply killing it with huge returns and low drawdown. It’s difficult to draw subscribers (or keep them) when the leader-board is full of 100% and 200% return systems with < 30% DD. This period is an anomaly, due mostly to being at the tail end of a bull market with big gains and very low volatility. Dozens of shiny new systems (especially volatility systems) have not been tested with a difficult market environment yet. When the market eventually shifts gears there will be a culling of the fair-weather systems and all-weather performers will stand out again.
Hopefully subscribers will still have money and the desire to invest here after the reaping.
Its funny you mention this , it goes without saying that losing strategies will effect all systems albeit non-directly . If subs lose money badly in some systems :
1- First it may drive them away from the website completely .
2- And even if they still have some appetite for trading and risk , they may not be able to do so due to lack of funds . The magnitude of losses that subs may have to endure with some risky systems cant be underestimated , sometimes its a life changing figures !
That´s why I wrote the follower´s guide so people become a little less likely to burn all their money… At least I hope that it will help and give some ideas for risk control on the follower´s side.
I’ll summarize for those that don’t want to read all that. DIVERSIFY your account.
That´s like I would have written a guide to profitable trading and you say “it comes down to this: win more money than you lose”.
There is far more detailed information inside so people can actually use it straight away. I´ve yet to see a complete guide like this anywhere in the internet really.
(Of course I´m not smarter than most people but apparently sharing knowledge is not as common as one would like to see.)
Actually, we’ve just had a modest volatility spike, one that came on slowly, with a lot of warning depending on what predictors one uses. Quite often volatility spikes come out of the blue with very little warning, but not this one, which was modest in size (so far) and sort of telegraphed.
Nonetheless, it would be very interesting to see how many high-flying volatility systems lost substantial money (e.g., more than perhaps 7%) in the last 2 weeks v. ones that either stayed roughly flat or made money. That might be a hint about which ones might have problems with a much larger volatility spike, either because of high leverage or a mediocre timing model.
Follow and bookmark my strategy…YTD % goal is 50% or more
Stay tune
