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@MatthewKlein what happens to killed systems in Collective2 ?
“Momentum Trends” by “Walter”, creator of c2star system “Mini dax and ES” was existing and visibile until yesterday. It has now disappeared from all C2 history, including Collective2
Is this normal?
Looks like “Walter” took his system “private.” That means he restricts access to the track record and no longer sells it on C2.
Now, Manuel, I know many people would like C2 to prevent this – and we’ve had many, many discussions about this, in these very forums, in the past. But it always comes down to this: if I make it hard for managers to take down failed strategies, they will cheat in other ways: i.e. they’ll create multiple identities on C2, they’ll start new accounts, etc. And, yes, yes, all these efforts can be policed, too… but every policing effort can be easily overcome over the internet. So all I’ll wind up doing is pushing one end of a balloon – solving no problem, changing no outcome, but instead spending resources that should be spent making C2 better for investors on pointless counter-measures that can be overcome anyway.
Of course I want great strategies on C2 – strong strategies with good performance and sound risk control. But the world of finance and speculation does not allow one to know exactly – with 100% accuracy – which strategies will exhibit these characteristic beforehand. There are ways to try to identify these strategies. You can make reasonable judgments based on track records and trading styles. But these efforts are never perfect – and particularly when market regimes change – “good” can turn to “bad” very quickly.
Remember this is not specific to Collective2. Go ahead and google “Tiger Management” – which was one of the world’s top performing hedge-fund families over the past decade. Their flagship fund just lost 52%. This is one of the blue-chip fund management companies in the world – started by Julian Robertson. For ten years it could do no wrong. Now, it has vaporized half its investors money.
My goal is to build the best platform I can. I want C2 to be a place where savvy investors who are willing to spend time can look at a wide variety of trading strategies, and can rely on good data standing behind track records, and can make informed decisions about trading and investing.
And, in closing, I think it’s incredibly lousy that “Walter” took his systems private. It’s unmanly, it’s low-class, it’s bad. I hope he will change his mind.
Walter is a notorious predator of newbie money, sadly.
Appreciate you specifically addressing this reoccurring issue, Matthew. It’s obviously a frustrating problem for you, investors and thoughtful trade leaders. Hopefully your platform will continue to attract and retain quality trade leaders and savvy investors!
How so @RJV63 ? Walter has two c2star systems : Collective2 Profile: Walter
One would assume C2 has done some vetting on this developer… So one would assume that his 3rd system “Momentum Trends” is not going to blowup the next day.
On a second matter @MatthewKlein is C2 going to reimburse the subscription fee of a system taken private and discontinued by the developer? Pls look at my history, I subscribed to Momentum Trends, paid $150 and the subscription got terminated by the developer 3 days later…
Thanks for addressing this. I do not understand however why C2 is protecting failed strategies and why all history of private systems is no longer visible, at least in Explorer.
Let’s talk about Walter, and his two lovely c2star systems:
It’s impossible for any new investor to know that this developer has a 3rd system called Momentum Trends that has blown up (with real money) and has been taken private. Don’t you think this information should be available to a new investor? At least, if I decide to invest in “Tiger Management” I do know they had a 50% drawdown. It’s impossible to infer this information in relation to Walter. You have access to the data @MatthewKlein, why don’t you know make this public?
This is what happened to c2star developer Walter with his strategy Momentum Trends on 13 October 2022, now private and with data not visible in C2. Should we now have this info as visible? Come on!
Well if you want to look at it another way, given enough time virtually all but a handful of systems will go sour on C2 eventually. For starters expect a minimum of 21% drawdown as I believe there is not 1 system older than 5 years that outperformed the SP with a lower dd. Then it’s slim pickings beyond that.
There would be no platform with over parenting and responsibility should be on everyone, leaders to improve on their mistakes & subs to proceed with caution. Subs are nearly as guilty with their thirst for quick & easy M O N E Y.
I am mot talking about over parenting. I am talking about transparency.
Think of it this way.
Hiding the blown system of Walter allows Walter and c2 to still charge subscription money to new traders. There is nothing in Walter’s profile that shows his previous systems with real money subscribers collapsed. This information is available but hidden to perspective subscribers and it should not be.
The only logical reason to do that is profit for c2 at the expenses of new subscribers. It’s wrong, and in the long term it’s also a bad business model as it purely relies on trial (newbies) vs building repeat (a community of long term subscribers and traders).
C2 should not police or parent the site… BUT they should release all information possible in order for subscribers to make fully informed decisions. Hiding failed private systems does exactly the opposite @MatthewKlein. Sure… Walter could come back with another profile. So what? At least we don’t make it overly easy for him to continue to profit from his two c2star systems with guaranteed $1000 a month while he destroyed wealth with Momentum Trends.
No trade leader can “destroy” your trading account unless you allow him/her to do so.
Just set a “catastrophic” stop loss (10% or whatever) and there you go, problem solved.
Now trade leaders will NEVER be able to blow up your entire trading account, even if they create thousands of new C2 accounts.
Agree. But take your 10% SL 10 times from 10 differed Walters with hidden information and your account is gone. My point is purely about informed decisions and transparency.
The information is there its not hidden . Just go to his public profile and then click on activity details and check all his strategies.
After that if the strategy is private just replace the word details with performance in the address link .
I agree 100%. I feel that C2 is sometimes setting up new users to take on more risk than they realize. As an example, I just received an email for the Trading Strategy of the Week:
If I was new to C2, this would probably be the first system I would subscribe to – it has a great track record, the SM has one other (visible) system that is also performing well and it has C2Star certification.
As someone who has been trading C2 systems for many years, I see two big red flags:
Wow,
I read all of the comments and I understand that the “blow up of accounts” is a very unfortunate situation, but currently as things stand this practice is supported by C2.
If histories can be hidden, and it is discussed as openly as is discussed in this forum, then surely, it is a lever that C2 grant for traders to hide their “oopsies”.
In my view, it will take C2 a weekend to produce 2 sets of statistics for each trader, one for the current strategy and one set for the traders cumulative strategies.
This will ensure that an investor has the opportunity to hide its “naughty children” and also for the investors to still have an overview of what a trader is doing over all of its strategies…
But they are not …
As it stand Faith trend as a strategy is one of only 5 strategies that can show a lifetime of over 90 days, max drawdown of less than 5%, average leverage of less than 5, positive growth in the last 3 months, and a Sharpe ratio over 1.
All of this points to a trader that is very rare on this platform. If Faith Trend cannot be promoted, then the promotion of any strategy should be stopped.
The max leverage is offset by an average leverage of under 2 that is remarkable, and if you investigate the trades that caused the higher leverage, you will see that the losing trades was abandoned at the time that the trader saw that they were not coming back into profitability, and replaced by enough winning trades to still end the month in the green.
I respect the other comments that is in many regards my senior on this forum, but if bad trades is anything to go by, we should write a collective letter to Cathy Wood from this platform, even though i suppose it will land in the bottom of a huge pile.
The next steps forward is totally in the hands of C2 in my view, and my suggestion would be:
Thanks for the opportunity to chime in on this.
It seems to me that promoting older systems with lower leverage should be a priority. You could even still allow all the young, high risk, restart systems, but put them in their own little corner of the website 
IMHO the leaderboard should essentially consist of “Old-Timers.”
Only two of the top 10 on the leaderboard started prior to 2022. If every year 1000 strategies start probably about 20% are going to do fantastic for the first year just out of pure luck.
Obviously old strategies can still be very risky, but they have at least withstood some test of time. I am of course biased since I have a strategy on it.
Wow, man, I do not want to pick up a fight with such an esteemed member as you on such a trivial matter, but if an investor need to trawl a forum to learn the secret sauce, then it is hidden as far as I’m concerned.
My opinion is that if you equalize for risk taken, leverage used, taxes, and fees the average leader will not beat benchmarks.
Likewise the average subscriber won’t and will have more fees too.
However, if you use leverage/higher beta I think it is reasonable to obtain a higher return than say the S&P in the long run assuming someone remains consistent.
One possibility would be for all systems to have a published “Maximum Equity Drawdown (rolling 24 hours)” and “Maximum Leverage”. C2 would automatically issue closing orders (and freeze the system for 24 hours) if the first threshold was hit and it would reject any new entries that resulted in the leverage going beyond the second threshold. System managers could set their own thresholds, but the subscribers could then use that info to have a better idea of the risks they are taking and the worst-case outcome. I understand it is not perfect and that there could be overnight gaps, large slippage, etc. However, I do think it would help prevent system blow-ups, or at least prevent some from unwittingly subscribing to high-risk systems.
True, for a simple mathematical reason.
Let’s say the Trade Leader starts with $10 000 and the subscription fee is $200 a month.
Since C2 “deducts” that $200 from his equity curve each month (from day one), now he has to earn 2% a month (24% a year)… JUST TO BREAK EVEN!
In other words he has to earn more than twice the return of the S&P 500 to reach breakeven point!!
Very few trading systems can do that.
Good question. I do know that if the margin is exceeded in the C2 account for the system, that it will automatically issue market orders to close positions until the account is margin compliant (similar to what the broker would do).
