Hello Collective2 members,
Over 10 years ago I setup TwistSTM3 on Collective2 as a trial and continue to maintain it during appropriate market activity such as the volatility we are experiencing currently. (It is a volatility based model that requires a base level of intraday range activity to achieve its optimal performance).
https://collective2.com/details/90483537
Still hanging in there with the list of “Old Timers” that have outperformed the S&P500 over their lifetime.
My initial deployment on Collective2 experienced a multitude of teething problems such as API misconfiguration, connectivity issues, position sizing multipliers and long/short direction mishaps, but were eventually rectified and stabilized.
The first month’s learning curve was a bit of a disaster with every programming issue occurring simultaneously. In fact it caused a drawdown of 50% in the first month which has probably resulted in it being kept under the radar, out of contention for any of the performance searches of suitable candidates. Needless to say, I didn’t get many subscribers.
Initially I traded the full spectrum of forex pairs but have recently focused on a smaller subset of suitable pairs. Easier to manage as well as quantify the risk characteristics of individual pairs in isolation vs a portfolio wide aggregation.
It was also important to stay on top of pricing errors, especially when trading the more exotic pairs. Trading a small number of pairs means I don’t need to be continually emailing the Collective2 staff with queries.
If using the C2PlatformTransmit, it is vital to have alerts and workarounds to pick up and deal with any issues in a timely manner. MT4 has gone through many development updates and any software that is built to interface with it needs to maintain pace with these changes and have suitable updates also. And be monitored stringently.
By far the most important thing to be aware of are the brokers costs, particularly spreads. When back-testing a model it is absolutely vital to test using the same spread/price conditions that you will be trading under moving forward. The difference between a back-test and reality is your choice of broker. This becomes exponentially more the case, the higher the frequency and shorter the holding periods of your strategy.
It would be great if Collective2 added some more retail forex brokers which had more competitive spreads than those currently available. The retail forex industry has a very competitive and dynamic environment where you can shop around for the optimal spreads on the instruments that your strategy is trading.
Although TwistSTM3 cannot accept subscribers as it isn’t going to be rescaled, so as to retain it’s research integrity/transparency, I am providing the identical signals and operational support to another manager model which IS subscribable. Effectively a “cleanskin” which is unencumbered by previous learning errors or periods of Sharpe Ratio diminishing inactive periods. It is mirroring the same trades as TwistSTM3 but will eventually have position sizing differences through compounding increases/decreases. Early days, but it looks promising. Focus is on low drawdown and standard deviation.
https://collective2.com/details/151615755
My thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read this far. I think Collective2 is a wonderful resource and with its community support could actually make a difference in democratizing access to high quality and affordable managers that aren’t subservient to value extracting corporate alternatives. The best traders and managers are generally small operators who aren’t driven by generating flow and revenue targets, just seek pure Alpha performance based returns.
Thanks Again
