Dear C2 Folks -
Over the last few months, the team here at Collective2 has been working on a super-secret project. It’s a new web site called:
www.youtualfunds.com
It’s a very different “take” on trading in the public eye. It focuses on U.S. stocks, and is meant to be accessible to the average stock investor.
Can I ask you a favor? Youtualfunds.com is currently running in beta test mode. Can you try it out first – before the public is invited – and fool around with it, and let me know what you think?
I welcome your feedback:
www.youtualfunds.com
Sincerely,
Matthew
P.S. Please forgive this re-post. I am attempting to keep this message on the top of the forums for the next day or two, to encourage people to try out the site!
Matthew,
Interesting concept. It would seem that the driving force behind getting people to use the system would either be stock picker ego or desire to paper trade. Anyone who could really pick stocks successfully would probably opt to earn income from their picks through Collective2 or similar service, start their own newsletter service or their own fund. It will definitely be for true amateurs and I’m a little concerned that others may be hurt by following their advice. Will there be evaluation metrics similar to those seen on Collective2 and will a trader api be provided?
Thanks,
-John
Good points, John. The general answer to all your questions is that the site is very early right now. It’s functional but is missing a lot of things – particularly some of the specific things you mention: helpful evaluation metrics, an API, etc.
We will soon introduce a way for people to get paid for running a Youtual Fund. First, though, there will be a bit of a shakedown cruise to work out the site’s early bugs and problems. As soon as we’re confident that everything is working as expected (and as soon as we populate the site with a few good Youtual Funds), we’ll roll out the financial aspect of the site: that is, how you can make money by creating your own Youtual Fund.
I hope you’ll all give it a try and share with me your suggestions and feedback.
Again, you can see the new site at:
www.youtualfunds.com
-Matthew
It sounds like this new site will compete with C2. Do you see youtualfunds replacing C2 at some future date? If yes, then I’m guessing you also will be adding futures, options, forex?
-John
Gosh, no. I do not think YoutualFunds.com competes with C2 in any meaningful sense. I think they each appeal to a different kind of user. I think the world is big enough, and human beings different enough, to allow both sites to thrive, side-by-side.
(Re: futures, options, forex: we don’t currently have plans to add those instruments to youtualfunds.com. For now, it’s purely a stock-centric Web site. Of course, that can change in the future.)
I get your concept. And like it. I just don’t think it comes through yet.
At first glance, I’m not really sure what the purpose is…what advantage it would be to me as an investor/user…or as someone posting trades.
Should the headline read “start your own Mutual Fund?”, (Instead of Youtual Fund) unless that has legal implications? "Oh, okay, I get it. A mutual fund of my own. Cool."
Also, IMO, the bullet points under the initial headline are a bit confusing. Why would I want to do these things? What’s the objective? Maybe if I FIRST understood what the heck a Youtual fund was, they’d make more sense. But reading them right now, I’m lost already.
(Forgive me, I’m a former ad copywriter, and could go on forever. But I won’t. Except to pass along a suggestion from my first creative director many years ago. “Before you write anything,” he said, "First put it on a billboard in 14 words or less. That will force you to focus on the key message for your audience."
And finally, as a system developer, would I want lo leave C2 and post on Youtual funds? Isn’t that drawing away your biggest source of business?
Matthew,
- if the purpose of this new platform is to compete and avoid defection to Covestor, and
- if you can connect this new site to Interactive Brokers via Gen3, and
- if eventually all stock trading systems, not just mutual fund type ones, can migrate to that site,
I am all for it,
Karl
"Should the headline read “start your own Mutual Fund?”, (Instead of Youtual Fund) unless that has legal implications? “Oh, okay, I get it. A mutual fund of my own. Cool.”"
I completely agree, it should read ‘start your own mutual fund’, no-one knows what a ‘youtual fund’ is so how can they understand the message to start their own one. The take-away should be that a ‘youtual fund’ is your own mutual fund.
- if the purpose of this new platform is to compete and avoid defection to Covestor, and
- if you can connect this new site to Interactive Brokers via Gen3, and
- if eventually all stock trading systems, not just mutual fund type ones, can migrate to that site,
I am all for it.
Matthew,
Did I hit the nail on the head?
Are my assumptions correct?
I would take a no response as an affirmative answer,
Karl
Karl -
We call the site www.youtualfunds.com – because it is meant as a clever play on the term “mutual funds” – not because the site is used to trade only mutual funds, or because it can be used exclusively by buy-and-hold investors. In fact, the site is described as a way to create your own mutual fund. Thus, all stocks and ETFs are tradable there currently.
Most Gen3 Autotrade brokers will eventually be supported at www.youtualfunds.com. Whether IB will remains to be seen.
As for competitors and defectors and strategy… I don’t have much light to shed there. I don’t really pay much attention to competitive sites. I just try to build good products that will delight people and that are cool.
Matthew
Matthew,
If this is the venue to finally establish a direct or Gen3 connection to Interactive Brokers, at least for stock trading systems (as Covestor has),
then everybody should cheer you on and you will preserve your place as the best auto-trading and tracking site on the web.
Karl
Great idea 
The main advantage of youtualfunds.com as I see it is:
1.) Frequent trading can be very expensive (commissions), especially for a small investor with little investment capital. By creating a fund and buying the fund symbol there will only be a one-time commission payment no matter how often the funds holdings are changed.
2.) Following a trading system and profiting from it often requires 10000 USD or more. It requires the investor to keep up to date on trading signals and place trades often. Simply buying and holding a fund symbol while letting the trading system developer taking care of the rest is significantly easier.
Interface improvements:
I like the percentage slider approach to allocating stocks. This saves me from manually having to divide available capital on stock prices in order to to find out how many stocks to buy. Could you implement this as an option at C2 as well?
I like the fact that all funds are treated the same. At C2 margin systems and margin systems are treated the same (kind of like comparing apples to oranges). Performance stats on youtualfunds.com makes more sense and makes it easier to compare the system performance.
Suggestions:
These are some of the features I’m missing at youtualfunds.com:
1.) More available trading system stats.
2.) “The Grid” or a similar search system.
3.) Better stock charts. Custom time-frame. Percentage gain/loss figures on the chart.
4.) Alternative income system. There is currently no way for me to make money on this site apart from trading my own fund. Trading signals and yhe fund symbol is available to everyone for free.
5.) The ability to run more than one fund would be nice.
6.) More than two brokers are needed.
I’m also noticing a lot of focus on short term performance (todays gainer and looser, this months winners, etc). Perhaps this is because the site still is so new. A better focus would be long term performance and risk/drawdown metrics. Competitions also focus on short term gain rewarding gambler type systems (win big, loose even bigger).
Otherwise this is a great idea and a good looking site.
Matthew,
I like the idea, and I have added a hedge fund: ^SURE
I did run across two minor issues:
(1) When I first created the fund I added a description and did a SAVE. However, when I navigated back to the page later I found that the description was blank. I added it again, and this time it stayed.
(2) In trying to add a few Tags, when I would hover on the tag with my mouse, the hover text was displayed on my background screen UNDER the popup window where it was essentially invisible. I was thus unable to add tags because I didn’t know what they meant.
Craig
