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It kind of came out of nowhere and the results look too good to be true. If you look at the starting capital it is around $878. As far as I can tell, this system has not been rescaled. The first trade on 9/4/25 opened 2 MNQ contracts. I’m not sure what the margin requirements were back then, but I’m sure it was more than $440/contract. The first 2 trades resulted in losses of $273. That right there is a 33% drawdown, yet the max drawdown for the whole history is only 18%.
I’ve trusted the C2 stats for many years, but now I’m beginning to have doubts. Perhaps it is related to the recent UI change?
Yes, good catch Gary.
I went through the LiveSignal chats after your post, and it seems the strategy manager points this out too:
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“The best way to see the reality right now is to look at the trades listed below; if you scroll all the way back to the start, you’ll see that I lost 120 dollars on my first day and 150 the next. I was left with only 300 dollars in the account, and it was from that amount that I reached today’s balance of 20,350.60.”
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Numbers look incredibly good indeed. I guess though if you start with such small account balance % returns like that are not impossible. Drawdowns though don’t seem accurate as you mention.
More worryingly for all subscribers (though only my personal opinion and I hope for the subscribers that I will be wrong ultimately): an almost 90% win rate and the following comment usually indicate with a high degree of certainty how these stories end.
"To consistently win, I place the stop loss far away and add more. What causes losses in open trades is the type of contracts."
You’ve found a new feature which is still being worked on. This one requires a bit of explanation, so take a deep breath. Here goes…
So: We are working with NinjaTrader to create a private version of Collective2 for their users. This version has some new features that are not (yet) part of the main C2 site. One of these features is the ability for NinjaTrader brokerage account holders to import their real-life track record and turn it into a strategy on Collective2. So far so good. But also, in addition, it allows strategy managers to create a “family” of strategies out of one single track record – i.e. they can create a “big” version of the strategy (appropriate for following with more capital), or a “little” one for smaller accounts. Big and little versions are not simply numerical translations; they may also map symbols too: for example, trading a micro product in the “small” version, or the regular contract in the large version, etc.
What you’re looking at here is the “little” version of the strategy. The way it was created was to take the large version and translate it into a small version, appropriate for smaller accounts. The starting capital was determined algorithmically, and was chosen to show the smallest possible amount that could be used to run the translated transaction record. The starting capital of the strategy was set at $1,000 - this was based on the margin at NinjaTrader for micro-silver contracts ($1,000). Reading your post, I can see why this seems a little bit weird - how did the stratgey manager know to start with EXACTLY the amount of capital required to open a position, etc. FWIW, we toyed with the idea of adding some arbitrary amount of capital to these NinjaTrader “small member of family” track records - but decided we would never get it right, and instead we chose to just show the strategy based on the smallest “unit size” of capital possible.
Not sure there’re really a perfect answer, but I can see why this strategy seems weird in the context of C2 strategies generally. (The NinjaTrader customer opted in to also offering this on the main C2 platform, which is why you’re seeing it.)
We are working with NinjaTrader to create a private version of Collective2 for their users. This version has some new features that are not (yet) part of the main C2 site"
I have a lifetime NinjaTrader license and a NinjaTrader trading account, currently trading on C2 with the account.
Can you elaborate on anything you’re willing to share about the “private version” you’re working on? Or, would you direct me to an appropriate person/department at NinjaTrader?
Thanks for the explanation, Matthew. I see now that the strategy is unavailable. Is that intentional? If so, is it the manager or C2 who cut off the access?
Just a quick thought on these systems created from real-life track records. It is clear to me that the max DD of the full-sized version of this system is much larger than 19% (see https://collective2.com/details/156597314). The trade history should be constructed using 1-minute historical data to calculate the real intraday drawdown. If this is not technically feasible, then it should at least be made obvious to prospective subscribers that the drawdown figure is based on closed trades and is likely much higher than what is reported.
Hi Matthew, just to reinforce what others have said about this equity curve. Something is wrong with the MDD of 18.9% that C2 is showing for this strat. In reality, if you look at the track record, MDD was almost 5X that. The strategy had a 2-contract @NQU6 long opened 7/23 07:45 and closed 7/23 16:12 for a realized −$5,455. The position was underwater by −$17,506 at its worst intraday moment (11:31 AM that day) before recovering most of the way back and closing at −$5,455. Reconstructing account equity at that instant (realized equity just before this trade, plus this trade’s own worst unrealized loss — there was no other position open concurrently that day) implies true mark-to-market drawdown at that instant: −$17,506, or −93.0%.
This checks out as the NQ low that day at 3:32 PM ET was 28,432.50 (your record has the time of this low incorrectly stated as occurring at 11:31 AM ET).
I think the equity curve should be fixed so potential subscribers know that they’re up against.
