How do we help grow C2?

Thanks … I did open an account at Tradovate for futures but need a stock/options broker and Tradovate are futures only. Gain also do not handle stocks and options, and Optionshouse is not listed as a compatible broker at C2. So apart from IB or an affiliate (which Halifax seems to be) there aren’t many choices for stocks and options.

Stick with the bigger known brokers, IB.

I too do not like IB software, ThinkorSwim from TDameritrade is probably the best retail trading platform, too bad C2 doesn’t work with them.

There are still issues with customer service at IB, it varies, especially when you approach them out of the regular trading hours. You can get clueless staff with very poor training. In such cases I ask for a senior support or wait for the US session. I had a very simple question once about margin. You don’t need to be very intelligent to answer it, either you know the answer or you don’t. The guy was giving me all kind of nonsense hoping I’d accept it as an answer. Then when I was transferred to a senior support he gave me the answer I needed in 5 seconds. Another case, they had an outage in their HK servers last year, for about 6-7 hours. Then they didn’t make sure the historical data is fixed, and denied there is a problem until I showed them screenshots of their own charts from TWS (those are by the way a joke that persists for over a decade). Finally they admitted the issue and fixed it.

So, things aren’t perfect with IB and can sometime take a long time to solve. But I still use them due to the low costs, good executions and variety of instruments.

I think C2 should answer answer following question:

Is C2 “home” for developers or customers and who is knocking to whose door?

The question is not simple as it looks and a proper answer to it will dictate future success of C2. In my opinion answer to this question is changing with time. On the beginning C2 was “home” for developers. And it is still “home” for developers as now (customer has no protection here, developer can claim false statements left and right).

If C2 wants to grow, it needs to become “home” for customers. That is creating some responsibilities like protecting customers against false claims by developers, etc. Role of C2 can be compared to casino operator. Casino operators are strictly regulated and products provided by casino also. C2 is not regulated, strategies are not regulated and strategies developers are not regulated in C2.

In order to become “home” for customers (if this is in C2 plans), I suggest as a starting point two simple customer protective rules:

  1. Forbid developers promoting on forum any bactesting results that are not in C2 trade records
  2. Forbid developers promoting on forum immature strategies, with C2 record less that 3 month or 6 months

I think this is good start. The time It will provide natural selection for new strategies, more fact oriented discussion, less tension between developers of immature strategies and customers on the forum. And C2 becoming “home” for customers, will increase customer count, capital and will bring more quality developers to C2.

On the end of day the logic is simple. A developer is knocking to the customer door to sell a strategy (TOS against nin-TOS strategies count).

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I think to open the HK market and EU.

I also think that more brokers that will join the better

And yes, developer should leave a room if customer doesn’t like a strategy. And yes Matthew, C2 should create set of rules that you don’t have arbitrarily close the topic each time bases on rule of thumb “in the moment”, but rules should be enforced based on C2 long term strategy (C2 has investors, so you have responsibility to serve their interest).

Now I can go on my vacation :sunny: Peace and love.

Last minute “great” idea from the airport.

I will ignore every self promotion/attempt of discussion from developer whose strategy is less than 6 months old.

marekj,

I can certainly acknowledge your concerns about seriously considering systems with a limited life. I decided to do some research on that very subject (I am sure someone has done this in the past). I just looked at the longevity of every system that is currently available on C2. The results are as follows:

Total Systems Available - 577
Systems One Year or Older - 174
Systems Two Years or Older - 69
Systems Three Years or Older - 46
Systems Four Years or Older - 33
Systems Five Years or Older - 15
Systems Six Years or Older - 9
Systems Seven Years or Older - 6
Systems Eight Years or Older - 3

Oldest System on C2 is over 12 Years Old.

As is plain to see, there are relatively FEW systems on C2 three years or older (only 46). These number only included systems that are current active/available. I am sure there have been MANY more systems created on this platform but they were either abandoned, killed or the account deleted (I believe it is possible to delete an account, but not sure if the trading history ever disappears).

Based on the forgoing statistics, it is probably safe to conclude that the vast majority of systems just don’t make it past 2 years (which many would probably consider a minimum evaluation period), or about 12% of Active Systems. Just something to think about.

Lately I see good number of young systems (< 2 years old) that have chance do well in the future and improve trand above. Overall I see average quality of the systems improving (strategy competition). Why I see importance of C2 set focus on customers and build on it, not on reckless developers that will be gone in few months.

Second though, it is a simple economic reason for this trend besides strategy quality. Most strategies are non-TOS. if developer will not get subscribers, he will quit after few months (weight of C2 cost).

I also review a number of promising, young systems. A review of the stats that I posted indicate is that less than a 1/3 survive at least a year and almost 88% don’t make it past 2 years. The task is to distinguish the stars from the duds!

For me the two most important params of strategy is age and risk of ruin account. Risk of ruin account 30% has to be zero and risk of ruin account 20% has to be single digit. For some strategies with this params historical DD is higher that 20% (Antares, RedCrest for example), As far risk of ruin account holds, that’s OK. Finding few strategies with above characteristic, checking correlation and making portfolio of them, let me sleep well. Also I do rebalance my portfolio monthly.

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Hi,

There are currently 577 live C2 systems as we speak (July 30, 2017), not 329.

46 systems (about 8%) are 3-year- old or more.

Thanks for the feedback! I selected All systems in the Grid and only came up with 329 (sorted by Age). How did you come up with 577? maybe I have some filter implemented that you don’t. Thanks!

. https://www.collective2.com/details/104478337

Hi,

While in the Grid click on the “Clear all Filters” link first, and then type 1095 (3 times 365) in the age section, then hit the Enter key, you will get 577 systems.

Ah, I see! I will have to go back and adjust my numbers. Thanks for the feedback!

You are quite welcome.

Thank YOU! I did go back and adjust the numbers on the original post based on your helpful feedback (I HATE posting bad data). Peace!

That’s all right, I made the same mistake myself, as it takes a while to get used to the grid.

Here is something useful that we can immediately learn from the Grid.

As you probably already noticed, potential C2 subscribers (and traders in general) are always looking for systems with very low drawdown (under 10% or even less).

Well guess what : these low-drawdown systems tend to produce lousy (to mediocre at best) results!

For instance go to the Grid (clear all filters first of course) and select 3-year-old (or more) systems. Now sort them by drawdown and look for those that are under 10%, you will immediately see that only 2 systems were able to beat the S&P 500.

Only 2!

So this idea that low drawdown (10% or less) systems with a long enough trading record (3 years or more) perform better than the others is a total myth.

In fact the average drawdown of some of the best hedge funds in the world is in the 30 to 35% range.

Really? Let me ask you: do you have any idea how C2 calculates this metric? I thought so.

In other words you develop filters on numbers that you don’t really understand, only take them as gospel.

Same question: is it explained somewhere how C2 calculates correlation? Or is this another gospel?

Sounds trivial but it is not. I, for one, strongly object (and did in the past and will do in the future) to have C2 (or you, or system developers, or the almighty) protect me. I want to protect myself. What I do want all the data (raw data, processed data, pre-processed data, post-processed data) I can get.

I don’t have any problem whatsoever developers claiming / posting anything they want. Who are you to tell me (or C2) what to have or have no access to? Do you have a degree in pattern recognition, out-of-sample training, chi-square test, degree of freedom? Even if you do, who are you to forbid me doing my own evaluation?

To have forums discussing systems is useful. To lock out systems is not. Contrary to your claim, it doesn’t serve a (protective) purpose.

To make data available for analysis is useful. To lock it is not.

To provide a platform for analysis is useful. (Ok we don’t go there…)

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