Patience is a Virtue

  • I have $132,000 of my own money following my strategy. The TOS badge is based on only one of the accounts.

  • I like that I have figured out how to automate the orders to my broker through C2 rather than entering them manually in multiple accounts.

  • I am mostly happy with the current performance of my strategy. +30% annualized (current extrapolation) is great in my mind though it is just an extrapolation at this point.

  • I think you sacrifice robustness when you look for strategies that have too perfect or too steep of an equity curve. If it’s too good to be true it probably is. Fortunately, I am not suffering from that.

  • I realize that even though I am happy with the performance I am unlikely to meet the requirements of most people on C2 who want faster more aggressive strategies.

  • I am making my strategy free for now to encourage people to test it out.

  • If people do start to autotrade I would certainly raise my price based on that after a time. However, if people want to just subscribe but not autotrade I feel no need to charge since that would in no way hinder my own fills.

  • I never know if I should try to sound sophisticated and stuff here or talk like a real person. Either way help a brother’s search metrics out and subscribe for free.

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Will the system make money before the arrival of Christ?

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All these strategies making 100-200% annualized are going to get smashed in a bear market nice to see something with more realistic returns and not just an overfit to current conditions… we will see what this brings though

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First or second arrival? :wink:

I know the future of the market no better than the timing of the return of Christ. All I can guarantee is that as of today the strategy has made money since it’s inception on June 6th.

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I Can’t Beat the Market (Blog Post)

The scenario

  • Assume a cash account
  • The only trades allowed are 100% SPY or 100% cash.
  • Assume a long period of 30 years.
  • Assume the market did 9% annualized with a max drawdown of 50%
  • With the above market results I estimate I could do 7% annualized with 20% max drawdown (not a guarantee!).

As you can see, I don’t think I could beat the market in such a scenario especially if you include the affects of fees, slippage, and taxes - which I have not. I especially don’t think I could be the market if my strategy had to go short the SPY instead of going to cash when bearish. Going short at times would just exacerbate the under-performance.

So why do I manage a strategy and not just buy and hold? Because (right or wrong) I do believe I can reduce drawdowns while maintaining the majority of the returns, which is huge and more than enough to make it worthwhile.

However, I take it a step further. If I can reduce drawdowns using timing and asset diversification, I believe that I can use relatively conservative leverage (going long on leveraged ETFs) to get even better results.

In a nutshell and without divulging any of my actual indicators, this is why I believe what index investors say but still see an advantage to doing what I do here.

unfortunately I dont think you will last here. As a way of reference - I have been on for 9 months, ranked #38 and NO subs or followers. Good luck, but caution…

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Well that is a bit discouraging, but thank you. I have already set up three accounts of mine to follow the strategy which is run by an algorithm which I monitor. Even with no paying subs I plan to just continue for the sake of simplicity in my life and trading. It is all set up and mostly automated at this point. Of course, it would be nice to have some subs that could cover the $140 I have to pay for publishing one strategy and subscribing with three accounts.

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first off ranking in c2 is meaningless. no one look for that number. We mostly look at a few things. Performance, drawdown, history, consistency and cost. in my personal opinion, these are the category i look at when i decide if this is a good strategy or not.

1.is performance above s&p?
2 .is you drawdown at least half of your performance?
3. have you been around at least 6 month and been thru a pullback or 2 of the instrument you are trading.
4. i look thru your trades and see if you scalp, swing or Martingale your bad trades.
5. are you expensive compare to other c2 strategy relative to your performance.
6. TOS is a bonus

If i use your strategy SG Growth as an example. The only thing keep me from subscribing is your drawdown relative to your performance. Your equity curve is very parallel to the spx. spx had slight drawdown in may and august. which are you also down -23% on both of those months. But you recover back when spx rallied back. So to me, this is just a strategy that is amplified by margin or trading leverage etf. If your drawdown was around 15%, or your gains are around 60% than i might be a subscriber. Long story short is I’m trying to find a strategy that lose less in a down market, and makes more on an up market for a strategy that mirrors s&p.

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Not that you asked for my opinion, but I like all of your points. There is one thing I would add that to me is the absolute most important even though it is rather subjective. Does it seem rational and sustainable. In other words a reality check.

Is it so good that it makes no sense why they would sell it on C2? Is it so good that it isn’t possibly filled with massive risks waiting to bite me in the butt? That kind of thing.

sustainable? maybe. I don’t think its too much to ask for a strategy that makes 20% gain per year to be around 10% drawdown. 40% gain per years with 20% drawdown. I’m sure there will be one off or events that shook the strategy. But that’s why i need to see how the strategy handle 1 or 2 correction. Like what happen to the strategy Dec 2018. When the market is down, was he down less or down more. then what happen after. Did the strategy just crashed the burned; sat idol; or came back more;

Because i know a correction or a crash is a matter of when. I need to know the strategy can handle a correction. i don’t mind the drawdown or the pull back, but how does the strategy handle the drawdown is also important.

I really wish c2 will put more weight on strategy rank or c2 score on track record and time on c2. All these new strategy ranked high, yet non of them were around before 2019. So all they had was a raging bull market of 2019 as their track record. With market like 2019, anybody can beat spy just by buying mega cap like Apple, Microsoft, facebook, and amazon. and i don’t need to pay someone just to beat or keep up with spy.

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I don’t think its too much to ask for a strategy that makes 20% gain per year to be around 10% drawdown. 40% gain per years with 20% drawdown.

I think you and I are on the same page on most items you are talking about. Waiting to see how it handles a correction is crucial in my opinion. Why pay otherwise. However, I do think 20% annual with a max drawdown of only 10% is unrealistic. Same for the 40% with 20% draw. I of course mean over a long period like 5 years or more. I would love to be wrong though. Are there strategies on C2 that meet this?

i don’t really spend that much time on diving thru all the c2 strategy. im sure there is a few strategies that able to achieve those numbers. I know any strategies posted on the forum haven’t been any good. i made a post earlier last month discussed all the strategies i subscriber to last 2 years, you can always reference back to that post if you like.

I think 20% gain and 10% drawdown is totally doable. 40/20, 60/30 just more difficult and require more risk management than anything else.

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Osutai,

At my request, Matthew has just added another tab on the Leader Board called “Old Timers”. This tab includes all the C2 strategies with at least 3 years track history on C2 that have also outperformed the S&P 500 Index over that time.

There are currently 31 such strategies on the “Old Timers” tab, so anyone can easily see in one location all the best C2 strategies that have stood the test of time.

Of those strategies, only 2 have traded through the Great Recession of 2008/2009, including my system, ETF Timer, which has an 11.8 year track record with a 16.4% annualized return.

It’s not surprising that virtually all of the strategies during that time folded, since the S&P 500 Index had a draw down of over 52% during that period.

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I love the idea of having the “Old Timers” tab! I think that is a great idea. Also, great work!

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Thanks InteractiveAssets!

I can’t believe I’ve been on C2 for almost 12 years. It’s been quite an experience!

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Thanks. Zip4x is on there. LOL.

It was down over 90% like 3 times. Never got hit with margin call. I’m surprise that’s still allow to exist. Because that don’t happen in real life trading.

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Re 20% gain and 10% drawdown, are there any strategies on here that have that ratio and a long history??

Regards B48ES

In a word, no-ish.

To see, use the Grid, set Strategy Age >= 365 days, Annual Return >= 20%, Drawdown <= 10% and you get two strategies, both less than two years old (so no, not a really long history). A long term MAR of > 1 is really hard, so if you relax the Drawdown restriction to <= 20%, then you get a more diverse listing of strategies, about 16 right now, and if you cull that list to being longer term (> two years), you still have five strategies with a diversity of investment instruments.

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That’s interesting, although i would say 365 days is a short time period.

Regards

B48ES

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Agree, one year is way too short, but the answer to your question would have been No instead of No-ish, and thus less instructive on how to use the Grid and what is reasonable. Your request for a MAR > 2 (20%/10%) is unrealistic in the real world for the long term. But a MAR greater than 1.0 is attainable long term.

By the way, one can add a Calmar column to the Grid, but the calculated values seem quite spurious and unusable. For example, searching for Calmar >= 2 and Age > 1000 days shows a listing of several strategies, but the actual ratio of CAGR/MDD is nothing close to the C2-calculated Calmar for most of these. So I don’t recommend using Calmar here, instead just input interesting CAGR and MDD values.