Hello,
I am curious about how many total subscribers there are for all the systems listed on C2.
I apologize if this question is redundant, I did a search in the forums and did not find a satisfactory answer.
Michael Zweighaft
None yet for me - but I think the best measure of success for each system is the number of subscribers they hold. It should be easy to display this data.
DJF
Exactly…I came here to post this exact idea. I would like to know how many subscribers to each system.
Very easy to do and a must…
Guys,
You know, small question if you don’t mind why do you care about subscribers flow? Do you want to make a living from subscribers? lol It’s really easy to estimate number of subscribers. So far IMHO it’s around 1:6 (subscriber:system). Sooo…?
As system vendors you have info “This system has been viewed…” and you can do a math how many times your system was rejected by potential subscriber. lol
Why do you need additional business related info?
Eu
I am not asking to know how many subscribers each system has. I do not seek to measure the success of each individual system. I just want a cumulative number for all the systems on C2 to measure how many visitors to this site are open to paying for someone else’s trade ideas. A measure of the earnings potential for any talented trader outside of trading income itself.
Michael Zweighaft
Earning potential is a good thing to know , but really if you have a system that can beat other systems in C2 who really cares what type of earning potential there are, since as a large numbers of subscriber influx into your system the signals that you send out would probably work very poor and ultimately end up in a none tradable system as more subscribe influx your system. What we want to know maybe as to how long a system on average can maintain its life cycle before system failure. Therefore, we need to know on average how long did the subscriber stay with the system and from there we can calculate to potential of the system we created. Again it is pointless to calculate the potential of earning from subscriber because if your system works over a long period of time with a high yield percentage return, the influx of subscribers will be more than we can all imagine. At the present moment c2 states that it has over 700 systems which mean at least 700 individuals are available at c2 promoting and comparing system trading. So, that alone can give you a potential of 700x average cost per month subscription (100) =70000 per month income coming in , as you can see , some of the system on c2 makes at the rate of return way higher than that if it has a large account like in the order above 500k. So if your system is good, truely tradable, and consistantly profitable a hedge fund would buy out your system with a subscription of let say ( 500 per profitable trade ??? or per month) or they may just buy out your system totally for a lump sum. So don’t worry about the potential you can generate on c2 but rather concentrade on your trading technique and system trading and tradable system and that my friend is a real potential earning behind all trading system. Good luck!
WOW! I had never considered the HUGE profits to be made by the system developers themselves, IF that is they produce a good system, with consistency and realism. This was a damn good idea, Matthew. Kudos.
Everybody wins, but particularly the subscriber because he is able to objectively evaluate systems unlike newsletter service that reel in susbcriptions with all kinds of unverified claims and fleece the masses for millions. C2 really puts the power in the customer’s hands to reward those who are productive and punish Palians who only talk and hype and produce no results. Keep up the good work, everyone who is making this happen. I see clearly now where this place is headed in the upcoming decade.
I’ll come clean! I have 3 subscribers - including a system developer who posted in this thread (poaching?!! LOL) They all subscribed today! Prior to that I have had 3 other subscibers, two who cancelled before they even got a signal, and one who never paid his subscription fee. I have priced my systems rather high by C2 standards, but that is because I know the system is tradeable and profitable - so a subscriber is effectively buying a significant earning potential for “pennies.” For example - If a subscriber buys my @ES system and trades a $1 M Account with it, he will make, on average, about 10% per month or 100k and be required to pay me less than 1k. Equitable?! Maybe in the subscriber’s eyes, not mine.
I use C2 primarily as a test bed and proving ground. Subscriber revenue is a great way to ensure that C2 pays for itself! If the system’s track record is good - the hedge funds will call. As it stands, Koan 2 EURUSD will probably be pulled in the next couple of months; I have two fund managers competing for exclusivity based on the real world performance currently underway. THIS is where the money is for system developers. Depending on what your regulatory environment is like, anywhere from 20 to 50% performance fees. Now THERE’S an incentive to write good systems!
I have two fund managers competing for exclusivity based on the real world performance currently underway.
In my opinion, this demand for exclusivity is irrational, unless they are willing to buy the whole system (assuming that you created it) along with the rights to it and you are able (not under any contract obligations) and willing to sell it.
Individualism and independence rise and fall together. Any other politics represents the opposite of the virtue of independence; it represents a form of slavery.
Justice is the virtue of judging men morally and of granting to each that which he deserves. Like every other virtue, this is a form of fidelity to reality, of independent thought, and of self-protection. It requires, therefore, a political system consonant with all these values; the system is capitalism.
In a free-market system, every man must pay his own way; he can claim from others only what he has earned, as judged by the parties’ mutual, uncoerced evaluations. As to the nonearners and nontraders, the system is fully as “cruel” (i.e., as just) as its enemies say: it offers people no alibis, no welfare workers, no booty. Under capitalism, no man’s achievements or troubles, whatever their nature or source, are assets or liabilities belonging to other men. Thus an end will be put to the infamy of paying with one life for the errors [or even accidents] of another.
The opposite of justice is the principle of penalizing virtue while rewarding evil - which is precisely the principle of statist (dictatorial) societies. In such a society, if an individual is rational, independent, proud, he is denounced. If an individual expends effort in docile, authorized form, his product is seized, while his docility is praised. But if an individual represents the vilest of evils, if he is a power-luster who dared to covert other men’s souls and who succeeded in his quest, he receives impassioned accolades and the showiest material perquisites. Thus the highest of the high, morally speaking, is vilified and crushed, while the lowest of the low, ensconced in his palace, savors the fawning homage beamed to him hourly by the state television network.
Whoever mutters that socialism is unjust in practice, but idealistic in theory, knows nothing about theory or about justice. Every statist regime is unjust in practice. The reason is that injustice is the essence of its theory.
Productiveness is the virtue of creating material values. In a free market, such a virtue is a necessity; there are no govermental bonuses for parasities. Capitalism is the system of productiveness; it is the system of and for producers. As to consumers under such a system, they are men who pay for what they consume, i.e., men who themselves earned the means of payment (or received it from someone who did). In a free society, only producers are consumers.
The root of capitalism’s productiveness is the fact that it is the system of free thought and thereby of creativity. Among other things, a creative life, as we have seen, entails a private career chosen as a long-range purpose; this demands an individualist politics. Privacy without the principle of egoism to sanction it is impossible, and so is a long-range approach without freedom from interference. There can be no personal career for a man whose destiny is public service, and there can be no chosen, sustained course of action for a man at the mercy of clashing pressure groups (or of a dictator’s switching orders). There can be no purposefulness in the moral sense apart from the right to set one’s purposes, i.e., the right to the pursuit of happiness. A person obliged to satisfy the desires of others has to become whim-ridden - because he is ridden by whim, the whim of whoever happens to be his moral master.
Since no one in a free society has a customer, a supplier, a job, an insurance policy, or a bank loan by force, since there are no laws to entrench mediocrity (or worse) and bar the path of talent, every chance exists for the innovator, the fountainhead in any field, to be heard, to place on the market the work of his mind, to fight slothful opposition, to rise to the top and be rewarded. The source of capitalism’s creativity, therefore, may be described as “competition”; but it is the kind which rests on the fact that each man is free to offer his best and that other producers are free to decide whether or not to buy it. The real source, in a word, is freedom, which clears the road for the active mind.
Integrity, the refusal to permit a breach between thought and actions, presupposes an individual’s freedom in regard to both man’s attributes: mind and body. A breach between the two is inherent in statism; leaving aside torture or brainwashing, dictatorships do not try directly to crush the subject’s mind; what they do is take over a population’s physical resources, making it impossible for an individual to act on his conclusions. Integrity demands men of principle, who spurn any plea for a moral compromise. Who can be anything but “flexible” in the most mealy-mouthed, pragmatist sense, when the pleaders express their viewpoint not only with words, but also by pointing to the paraphernalia of compulsion waiting mutely to back the words up?
The final moral issue to be considered here is the principle of egoism. since egoism is a requirement of life and a presupposition of rights, it is inherent in the system of life and rights. Under capitalism, as a matter of fundamental law, man is is an end in himself. Though he is free to live for others, each is expected by the nature of the system to be the beneficiary of his own actions: he gains values by pursuing his own life, property, and happiness. This is the opposite of any system that upholds self-denial.
Capitalism rewards the pursuit of rational self-interest. Since rights are inalienable, a man can succeed ultimately only by creative thought and action, not by sacrificing others through the use of force or fraud. Nor can he succeed by sacrificing himself - whether through selfless service or plain irrationality, such as being irresponsible, context-dropping, and short-range. Criminality aside, a man can act irrationally under capitalism; but he cannot run to the government for any recompense or bailout. In a system based on adherence to nature, there are no “no fault” clauses. Either one adheres to nature or, in due course, nature takes care of the matter.
Morally, I conclude, capitalism emerges triumphant: it is the system of and for the good. For which reason, evil men under capitalism cannot succeed, not in the long run. No system can guarantee rationality. What a proper system can do, however, is to de-fang the evil. By safeguarding innocents from force, capitalism does the possible in this regard. To be free from the machinations of the wicked, all that a man needs is freedom. The only protection virtue needs from vice is a single rule: hands off! Thereafter, the worst that the exponents of unreason can achieve is to make the path of the moral man more difficult - for a while.
Pal, whenever I see your posts, I feel headache. They are so long. 
I have 3 subscribers - including a system developer who posted in this thread (poaching?!! LOL) They all subscribed today!
I think this is directly due to the effect of the Realism Factor (RF) released recently.
The morally objective value of a product is the evaluation reached by the men with the best grasp of reality (in a specific category and context, in this case aided by the RF), regardless of whether or not they are involved in buying and selling the product. The socially objective value is the evaluation reached by the actual buyers and sellers (in the real-world). These two evaluations are not necessarily the same (in the absence of the RF), because the buyers and sellers may lack the requisite grasp of reality (reflected in RF); they may lack the knowledge which would make the product, as judged by their own mind, a need, a pleasure, a value (or, conversely, which would make the product a disvalue).
The free market, however, is the greatest of all educators. It continually raises the knowledge of the citizens, the caliber of their tastes, the discrimination of their pleasures, the sophistication of their needs.
>I have priced my systems rather high by C2 standards…
A free market is a continuous process that cannot be held still, an upward process that demands the best (the most rational) of every man and rewards him accordingly. While the majority have barely assimilated the value of ETFs, the creative minority introduces the Hedge Funds. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority is free to demonstrate…
Within every category of goods and services…it is the purveyor of the best product at the cheapest price who wins the greatest financial rewards in that field - not automatically nor immediately nor by fiat, but by virtue of the free market, which teaches every participant to look for the objective best within the category of his own competence, and penalizes those who act on irrational considerations.
Pal, I will see you on WSJ-----keep up the good work write as much philosophical ideas which are not related to trading as you want , I love to read them . Love it
If a system makes money for its subscribers they will be happy and continue to pay the subscription rate. If it does not they will be unhappy and will stop paying the subscription rate.
True.
Going on the quick read of the responses it would appear Collective2 trading systems are primarily used as competitively ranked C.V. (either to sell a system, or to run a hedge fund) rather than a means of acquiring subscribers. But the acquisition of subscribers has merits in itself and can be lucrative source of income if done correctly. It is also an opportunity to earn money from a system when the managing trader does not necessarily have the funds to benefit from his or hers system. What makes a system attractive to a subscriber may not necessarily be the no.1 ranked C2 system. For example, which of the following systems would have the highest number of subscribers; if the top ranked system charged $1000 a month, the fifth best ranked system charged $100 a month, and the tenth best system charged $10 a month? This is the kind of information I want to know. Actual subscriber data is important for those of us who want to use C2 as an additional revenue stream, not just as an advertisement of our skills. The only relevant data for people like me is the number of active subscribers each system has - not the number of views and ‘rejected subscribers’ a given system gets. Performance is one thing - but the best performing systems are not necessarily those maintaining highest subscriber numbers, or subscriber satisfaction.
So folks of C2 - any chance we could get to see this data?
Best wishes,
Declan
I don’t think this will ever show up on C2. The number of subscribers at any given time is highly dubious in terms of data value. Any system that has a trial period could have severe fluctuations in subscriber numbers. And a great system with a high fee might only attract a few subscribers, but the account size of those subscribers would likely exceed that of all subscribers of a lesser priced system. One reason for pricing a good system higher than others is to limit the number and quality of subscribers to few and very rich.
Pal -
A buddhist monk will often spend hours staring at the clear blue sky. The ACT is of no importance, the frame of mind is what counts and what improves the quality of the journey.
In my life - markets have always been like a clear blue sky. They are the background noise of my life. My systems are like smoke rings. Now why would I sell a system that I created knowing that no matter how much is offered, I could make 10-100x that much by managing the system myself? The most expensive system sold recently (Investment Bank rumour) was $2 M USD. In order for a bank to pay that much, the system must be capable of well over $200 M USD in profit over the next 12-24 months. If the author had gone for a standard 25% performance hedge fund rate, he could have had $50M over 2 years instead of just $2M now.
Then charge 1M/year for your system, Zenture… (lol)
The rich clients you’re speaking about :
- they don’t manage their funds themselves;
- if they do, they don’t care about C2, because they already know trading;
- why should they trust any C2 system, considering they can enter the best hedgefunds in the world?
Take no offense, but I think you’re a bit too proud. There is no wonder system, without any drawdowns and disappointments. Furthermore, a good system must evolve, some settings have to be changed when the market itself changes. If not, a good performing system can quickly turn into a mess.
That’s why I wonder if most systems aren’t simply too expensive to attract clients. Anyway, I respect your good job here on C2!
Wishing you all the best.
If the author had gone for a standard 25% performance hedge fund rate, he could have had $50M over 2 years instead of just $2M now.
If the author had ultimately started a hedge fund and let the power of compounding work for him (instead of selling his system and the rights to it), keeping most of the profits to himself, he would have made more over time, like even Warren Buffet or George Soros.
In a division-of-labor society, no one produces by himself all the goods and services that his life requires. What he does produce is an economic value he can offer to others in exchange for the things he wants; he produces the value-equivalent of the goods and services he seeks. A man who deals with others by this method is the opposite of a dependent. He relies on his own power of creativity in order to survive. He counts on the value of his work being recognized by rational men, not on getting favors from any person or clique. He is not restricted to dealing with a clique; potentially, the whole world is his customer. Nor does he benefit from a policy of conformity. In a free country, intellectual independence and material wealth tend to be concomitant; the more a producer exercises his own best judgment regardless of the momentary motions or passions of the crowd, the more economically successful he becomes.
Market (socially objective) value, in essence, is the most rational assessment of a product that a free society can reach at a given time; and there is always a tendency for this assessment to approach the product’s philosophically (morally) objective value, as people gain the requisite knowledge. In time, barring accidents, the two assessments coincide. The creative minority grasps the philosophically objective value of a good or service, then teaches it to the public, which is eventually lifted to the creators’ level of development. “It is in this sense,” that the free market is not ruled by the intellectual criteria of the majority, which prevail only at and for any given moment; the free market is ruled by those who are able to see and plan long-range-and the better the mind, the longer the range…
The role of independence in human life is writ large, for all to see, in the lives of the great creators in any field. Not all independent men are great creators; but all great creators by definition are independent men, at least to the extent of their creativity. These are the men whose achievements have lifted mankind out of raw nature and into a human mode of existence.
Whoever takes a great step forward leaves a chasm behind. In the best of societies, he has to wait patiently, alone, for other men to catch up; and most societies to date have hardly been the best. Hence the fate suffered so often by creators - not only hatred, ridicule, presecution, martyrdom, but the necessity to spend one’s life and precious hours fighting against their root: against mental passivity, slothful ignorance, willful deafness, enshrined falsehood. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
You are absolutely correct Jerome; The kind of client I want does not generally want to trade my signals. They want to trade the system in a totally hands off manner. The subscribers I have and any new ones that come along, will be the types of folks who a) have the money to trade the system appropriately, and b) ENJOY executing their own account. I figure I may top out at 10 clients, if that! But that’s perfect, because I do not want to kill the system, just prove it and have the proving paid for. This way, I get what I want - audited track record, Matthew gets paid and the client makes some money - everyone wins.
As to your last point - “Entering the best hedge funds in the world;” This is patently useless. The best high return funds in the world are full/capped, can rarely accept more than a few hundred million and are already part of any “rich” person’s portfolio. TRADING and C2 form the part of their portfolio called “FUN.” Also, don’t assume that just because someone knows how to trade that they don’t necessarily need a good system. Knowing how to trade doesn’t automatically confer the skill of knowing when and how much to trade.
I take no offense. I am not too proud, I am no different than many other system designers in here. Anyone with a rating above 700 is probably pretty good - and looking at my “peers” in the 900+ group, I have to say that I am hard pressed to find any sort of commonality of value among the 900+'s. But that’s another thread! Suffice it to say that like all vendors in here, I started with a system that I believed in, and have traded it here (and elsewhere) since April. I now have enough track record to show meaningful statistics, a decent equity curve and overall a system that is attractive to money managers. With money managers, YOU control how much capital the system trades (so you don’t blow it out), and you take a percentage of the profits. There is nothing more lucrative than that - Flat sale is a ridiculous proposition for a system that works well on a liquid market.
Phew! Pal you write really well but it is exhausting reading your posts dude!
Marketing 101 - If you have a good product at the right price at the right place, it will sell.
I will not pay $1000 for something that is worth $10. I am sure that the consumers of our products are looking for great value as well. If you have a great system that is consistent and at a competitive price and if C2 does the advertising right and attracts traffic to the site, then subscriptions to the top systems should follow.
However, I do agree that a nudge in the right direction is necessary from the administrator with regard to pricing policy and it’s correlation to the number of subscribers and transparency thereof. I doubt it will offend anyone if pseudonyms are used.
I am new and the impression I get is that the subscription rate is very low here. I am not interested in being scooped by a fund manager. My aim is to provide affordable trading strategies to the little guy. To help him grow his investment. I do not want to give it away for free because then it will not be appreciated but I would like to know what would be a fair price to charge someone with a smaller account.
