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.
Under the new “one-click-simulation” model that we are moving towards, you won’t be allowed to see specific open positions for strategies that you simulate.
(You’ll see real-time profit and loss, and after the trade is closed you’ll see the trade in the trading record.)
On the other hand, you will be able to Simulate any strategy for as long as you want.
We’re trying to simply the act of “Simulating” a strategy, while opening up the possibility to simulate many strategies for any period of time (no longer will you be dependent on the Trade Leader saying, “You only have 7 days to try my strategy,” or whatever.)
Obviously there’s a tradeoff, and it won’t suit everyone equally but I think it’s a move in the right direction, to make Simulation and portfolio building/testing easier.
And P.S. - of course you can subscribe to a strategy and pay the strategy developer if you want to have access to specific open position information and specific real-time buy/sell signals.
Yes I am referring to systems we pay for. I am unable to see the open positions on the dash board when I simulate them. Please add the tab for it, the same one you added for the systems we actually trade
With the new plan can you trade the same system in multiple brokerage accounts? Is the max number of IB brokerage accounts supported for autotrade still 3 from one c2 account?
This new change is really making me rethink C2. If you look at systems 3 years of age or older, there are only 10 existing systems to choose from at this time. There is really only one, Mean Reversal ES Daily, almost 5 years of age that has managed to show a decent curve against my 401K. It might be time to up my 401K ante that is company run and say by to C2. Years ago, Matthew touted C2 as a place for individual investors to create their own hedge fund with multiple systems that possibly could outperform the market. I am afraid now, that fees might make that idea prohibitable unless you have several million to play with.
I have lost money continually over the past multiple years. I am not blaming C2, but my own decision to dream of beating the markets without learning the markets and chasing multiple dreams following short term systems with great initial beginnings only to get oversold and then miserably and expensively flop. I think It might be time to let the experts drive of which very few exist at C2.
I hope every new investor to C2 takes heed to these similar lines seen on all system pages,
“Trading is risky. There is a substantial risk of loss in futures and forex trading. Online trading of stocks and options is extremely risky. Assume you will lose money. Don’t trade with money you cannot afford to lose.”
I thank my lucky stars, that the money lost was affordable.
PS. However, I really would of loved that new deck.
Matthew, just to let you know, I am going to close autotrade down to three systems over the next week. In 28 days, or when the next billing period arrives, I will probably search and choose one system to follow. The system I am thinking of as of right now is Simplicity Trading. Again, another short term system showing tremendous results. I have such a bad fetish over the likes of such systems. However, I would like to trade that system at 50% instead of equal money. Please continue to allow trading to take place at a percentage less than 100 %. This will help system designers as well as individual traders to opt to find the right coupling. Thanks
I just wanted to say that there are 10 future’s systems over 3 years old. There are 41 strategies existing with an age over 3 years. Some of the stock systems have done an excellent job. The Spirit of Nicolas Darvas is one such strategy.
I asked the same question (i.e. does c2 plan to change the minimum scale) yesterday and got no reply. I have a bad feeling about this; when a direct question gets unanswered (twice), something may be cooking.
On another topic it was answered. Let me quote. “Finally, to re-iterate once again, when you use a real live broker account, you can scale your trading at any Scaling % you like.”
Joseph: No, we have no plans to enforce any kind of “minimum scaling” for live-account AutoTrading. (We do limit less-than-100% scaling for free Simulated Trading.)
Mark: I apologize because I thought your original post was a sophisticated joke. (“What’s next Matthew? Are you planning to phase out manual trading?”)
Because, yes, quite a while ago we did stop supporting “manual trading” (i.e. trading manually in the same account in which you AutoTrade). It was an unpopular decision that was hashed out here in the public forums quite openly over many threads. That’s why I thought you were yanking my chain. Sorry I didn’t answer. So: Manual Trading (i.e. trading discretionarily in the same account in which you are autotrading, by using your broker’s platform to enter trades) will not be supported.
Matthew, I apologize as well if you thought I was being snarky. The question wasn’t about that; it’s actually just a straightforward question. Are we going to have the ability in the foreseeable future to elect to manually trade a system, via email signals or the online real time signals? Or are you gradually going to maneuver subscribers to 100% trade via autotrade?
Oh, I understand your question now. The answer is: as I write this, no, there is no vision, plan, or even inkling of forcing “AutoTrade-only” in the future.
Perhaps in the year 2028, when I’m a creaky and ancient old man, I’ll regret posting this message, and it will be thrown back in my (wizened) face, but this is the reality as I write this.
I’m not sure if this is the same issue Mark is referring to, but I was also going to ask about manually following strategies in general. It is clear that this isn’t possible in the same account that is being autotraded, but the new Dashboard seems to discourage manually following systems in general (through another account) as the “Subscribed” tab doesn’t appear to show signals or open positions for systems that are subscribed to but not being autotraded … only the option to turn autotrading on and off.
The new Dashboard also makes it much more difficult to actively monitor all systems and signals compared to the old Dashboard, which has everything on one page. For example, to create the same functionality that the present Dashboard has, you first have to click on a broker tab, then once there click on the open positions tab to see positions, then click on the recent orders tab to see new orders. So 3 clicks to get at this information, then this has to be repeated for each broker. So for real-time position and new order monitoring it would be a continuous sequence of cycling between broker tabs, and then clicking the two tabs within each of those pages. If there were an “All” tab that brought up the existing Dashboard, exactly as it is now, we could maintain this important ability to see everything on one page. Is this possible?
OR
Provide another, unrelated link, that brings up the existing Dashboard. For example, maybe a link called “Activity Monitor” (or similar) placed within the existing “Invest/Autotrade” left side section with the Control Panel, P/L Report, etc.
It appears you have a different idea for the new Dashboard beyond real-time position and new trade signal monitoring because of how things are split up between brokers, as well as some information that is superfluous for real-time activity monitoring (eg. the equity charts, Activity Feed, etc.). But the ability to monitor existing positions and see new trade signals come in, all on one page with no clicking around, is very valuable when following multiple systems at different brokers, some manually traded, and the present Dashboard has this all neatly done already. It would be a shame to lose that practical functionality.
This structure doesn’t make sense for annual subscription for 5 strategies.
Solo $390
Up to 3 $795
Up to 5 $1599
Unlimited $2399
I understand that someone in C2 get statistics of current investors and find out that significant percentage of investors subscribe to 3+ strategies and decide to “squeeze” them (make them pay in single “Up to 5” plan more that for 2 separate “Up to 3” plans).
Bravo for innovation!
But…don’t you think that by this step, you will force investors go with “Up to 3” strategies plan and reduce your and developers revenue? This is really topic for C2 venture investors (I already know that in C2 greed takes over and nobody understand what is shooting itself in the foot).
Overall, after hiking autotrade subscription price from flat $99, C2 will get more revenue and developers will get less revenue (investors will reduce number of traded strategies). Right direction to nowhere (less developers in the future and less customers without new blood).
So far I don’t see any organic steps by C2 to attract new developers and customers. Sadly, I see steps to increase own revenue by taking them from developers (question to developers, do you see number of paid customers increasing or decreasing in connection to latest C2 price hike)?
Is this a polite way to say that long-time customers
will be forced to switch at one point in the future?
At the moment old customers are paying 1188$ a year for 5+ strategies,
plus all subscriptions (despite negative months).
In future we would have to pay 2399$ for 5+ strategies?
That would be 100% more! No, thank you for the offer.
But I won’t mind paying that higher yearly amount of 2399$ if
I also only have to pay each individual strategy only when it
reaches a monthly higher watermark. Like a success fee.
By the way, most social trading plattforms do not charge
a monthly customers fee, and their strategies are included. The fees will be automatically deducted from the performance. So, developers only get paid when they are succesful.
It’s fair and easy to understand.
I could post some examples, but I guess I’m not allowed.
I agree with your statement.
If customers will be forced to pay double for 5+ strategies,
then they are going to reduce it to only 3 or 5 strategies,
or leave c2…
Timeline…I want to be the last customer on the “old” autotrade $99 plan and I will switch to the new plan.And how the first investor switched to a new plan will will compared to the last investor? Dumb? What is the timeline between switching first and last investor?
When conditions keeps changing, how can anyone rely on you?
First was the price hike to developers, then eliminating manual trading at the auto-trading account, now increasing auto-trading fees, plus eliminating the free trial.
Free trials are important to people to get first hand experience of executions in their own accounts, latency, trade management of developer (pulling stops…) and the whole link between developer - C2 and their brokerage accounts. Technical issues are there - they need to be well understood before people sign up. The “simulated” plan gives little more than just viewing past trades.
You are making it more difficult for people to make the decision to become paid subscribers.
And taking away the marketing benefits of free trials from developers.
Any serious developer who looks at your platform with a view to the long term (means not those who try to shoot for triple digit returns until the system goes belly up) need time to build a track record. In this time, most likely the costs will be higher then the income for a significant period. Why should people do that if things constantly change?
You need to have some degree of predictability. When will be the next restructuring of pricing plans / elimination of features?
I pay the same fees at my broker as I paid 10 years ago.
I purchased lifetime license of a trading platform and I get free upgrades of new versions indefinitely.
I pay the same price for data as I did in the past.
Those businesses manage to do very well without changing conditions every few months.
I’m not saying you must freeze rates forever. But if you make price changes, make them gradual. And once you’ve made a change, state the minimal time for it to stay in place.
NinjaTrader is a good example how to conduct business. It is based on creating new customers, not squeezing existing ones.
In past, C2 was most interesting, innovative social trading platform. Unfortunately C2 was able to create a new feeling about itself. Need for a serious competitor.
Interestingly, C2 exists for around 15 years and no serious independent (non-affiliated with brokerage) competitor came to the market. I’ve seen number of black boxes with only equity curve or P/L shown, but no open trading data projects.
