Hi @MatthewKlein161 ,
if a system has placed 1500 trades and real life 3000 trades, what does this indicate?
is it maybe 1 year without subscribers and then 4 subscribers for 1 year???
for example? or 8 for six months etc…
Real life trades are trades that have been traded on a cash account in a live cash account of an autotrader. They include both entry and exit numbers so 2 real life trades is actually 1 system trade. If the system trades are not exactly half the number of real life trades it is because some trades have been entered via the C2 simulation network (these trades are simulated trades). Individually next to all real life trades there is a symbol and this way you can differentiate the cash trades and the simulated trades.
Thank you,
Meaning that the top 3 (oldest systems) in here has made not really that much from subscribers…
Like this one - https://collective2.com/details/77477692
great system but (similar sub earnings as 1 or 2 subscribers) or am I wrong @matthew_klein12
According to recent trades this system is being traded by 1 autotrader.
This particular system is a bit overpriced for $175 considering that it is below its equity high in June 2018. Does it make sense to pay ($175x17=) $2975 in fees and not actually make any money?
Looking closer at the systems and autotrades there is no way you can see how many subs a system has. It can be BTO (Buy to open) 381 and next can have “3” subs at 100, 100, 181 when STC (sell to close) for example…
What you can do though is to look at how big the volume is and “assume” from that how many are trading it…
Looking at this system: https://collective2.com/details/123937705
10 trades but 115 on real-life trades.
The first two trades there on the TWIX BTO and STC, clicking the “see autotrade fills icon”
The first BTO has 10 trades in it, and when on STC there is 17! trades. So the 115 trades doesn’t have any value for anyone (the volume adds up but its actually just misleading both traders and leaders)…
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Lars, don’t think this too deeply. A high ratio of real-life trades to system trade signals indicates some real money is following the strategy. That’s probably about all it means.
And… the number of real-life trades is roughly twice the number of system trades automatically in some cases. I have a TOS system that follows my actual IB account trades, has from inception. No one else follows my system (profitable, but low Sharpe, etc). It has 50 trades in nearly two years, but 106 real-life trades… where the discrepancy is maybe from the couple of times that I eased out of a trade in steps, perhaps? I don’t want to bother counting them up to find out.
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Thanks for your honest answer v1,
it looks like aversging out for example has created more real-life trades as the volume is pretty much the same. It also looks like the way I am trading/investing is not interesting enough for the subscribers. Not looking at mine as it has only been here for 5-6 months but other systems like mine…
I reckon I will kill my system soon unless something happens…
As you wish. Personally, although on the net I’m paying C2 more than I’ve earned, being here and sticking with it helps me strive to improve my approaches. My strategies have pretty much all ended profitably, but they just weren’t that attractive to C2 subscribers. Perhaps my newest strategies will be better (they’re better in backtesting, of course) and I’ll add TOS and start climbing up the charts. 
I always have been somewhat of an optimist.
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Lars -
There are a couple reasons the count of real-life trades might not be what you expect. When someone “syncs” a position (for example when someone joins a position for a trade that is already in progress), then – because his trade entry does not exactly match the strategy’s signal – it isn’t part of the official count. That would explain, for example, why you might see more exits than entries for a particular trade (i.e. people joined the trades already in progress, so the entries were not counted). A similar thing can happen on the way out of a trade: people might stop following a trade while it is still open (using a customized stop-loss, for example).
Finally, it may be worth pointing out that the the “count” you are concerned about is technically a count of execution ids we receive back from brokers. When someone trades larger amounts, a single trade might be broken into multiple execution chunks, and reported to us in that way.
As per v1Trader’s comment, I think good advice here is not to obsess too much about these counts, other than to accept that they reflect aggregated real-life trade volume. They’re not really meant to be used as a basis to reconstruct exactly how many individual humans are trading a specific strategy.
Finally, Lars, your strategy (https://collective2.com/details/124753017) looks very good! But it only has five months of performance behind it. Hang in there. I think that if it continues to perform the way it has been doing, you will do well. (Fingers crossed.)
Matthew
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Thank you for answering my question Matthew.
I see the correlation between subscribers in the activity box in any given system and what we talked about also don’t match up. Meaning your both right I assume… don’t overthink the numbers…
It would be nice to see an update on how much the top 50 systems make (single or on average each month). It would also be good to have a more detailed plan on how a subscriber should do things for actually making money in every system…
I have very few trades, and in return that is more cost effective than a lot of the systems in here which trades a lot. Same with systems using high leverage, automatically when using leverage you pay around 4-8% a year for borrowing that kind of money or even worse with cfd trading…
On top of that it’s 99 dollars for autotrading and 50-150 for a system…
percentage wise this comes in huge if you don’t invest with a decent amount…
Hi Lars,
The problem right now it that the the market has been straight up nearly the entire year. There really hasn’t been a lot of sell offs to differentiate the good traders from the bad. The strategies that are using a little bit of leverage are easily outperforming the market without much skill. Once there is a big pull back that leverage is going to hurt the trade leaders that don’t know how to read the market. Like Buffett said, you only know who’s swimming naked when the tide goes out.
Give it some time. If you can profit through the next sell off you’ll get a lot of attention. You’re right at the performance point where my strategy started to get a lot of views and sims. That will lead to paid subs if you can keep the performance going.
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Thank you Ethos for your honesty,
I have been thinking the same myself, and that pullback/correction should be due very soon… 
Hi Lars,
I was just checking out the leaderboard. Congrats on moving up to 4th spot and getting some attention from subscribers!
Thank you Ethos!
You were spot on with your assumptions on that “things would turn”. What I hope now is that the subscribers understand that investing/trading takes time and you have to give it time to develop. I see several good systems which have been around for some years and are doing very good but “just ok” sub wise… And of course the other way around also (hopefully Shining Delta Capital will end up there).
Not sure what C2 members expect, I reckon one of the things (problems) we as leaders have to work on explaining to followers is that you can see a system that makes 100% one year then jump on and get 0% the next and then -30% before leaving and then repeat this with another system.In other words, if the % earned in a system looks too good, it probably is…
Hopefully there are enough followers in C2 which understand what steady % earnings and compounding can do for your account in the longterm.
Anyhow, congrats on being number #3! (on the leader board)
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Congratulations to both of you, Ethos and Lars! Full disclosure, I am a subscriber to Ethos Swing.
From a subscriber’s vantage point I have a good idea why you are both starting to do so well. You have great prices, for one thing, it’s so much easier to join a strategy in its early days, at least for me, that doesn’t charge a lot. You both have very sane looking trade records, I don’t see any kind of wild risk-taking or martingaling (have we officially made that a word on C2?). Both would seem to be easy to trade manually (I know this for sure with Ethos Swing) and are IRA-friendly. Being able to trade manually means you are saving a subscriber who chooses not to autotrade quite a bit of money a year. Your trade records match the descriptions of your systems - many don’t even do that. And, of course, you are both doing extremely well. As Ethos often says, we will get a better feel for your skills as traders when we have a strong downturn. Trading with Ethos, I have a lot of faith that he will do well, hopefully you will too, Lars.
I have never subscribed to your system, Lars, but Ethos is fantastic at communicating with subscribers. He sends out a weekly email, with more of the big picture of what he is seeing in his indicators and lets us know what he is watching. He also sends out emails when he anticipates a trade in the near term. You never feel like he is asleep at the switch and it’s great to get a heads up when you are trading manually.
Finally, and I would like to thank both of you for it, is your decorum on the forum. I can’t be the only one to whom that is important, it shows maturity and an ability to control emotions. Also, we have had a lot of ugliness on this forum in the past, with trade leaders brawling and insulting each other. I would never subscribe to one of their systems, even if it were doing well, I honestly feel they could be some kid trading in their parents’ basement. I have seen you treat others with respect, offer polite, constructive criticism, and, as in this thread, congratulating people for their successes. What a change from just a few months ago. C2 seems to be recovering its professional tone, possibly people like you are leading by example.
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Thank you for the kind words VG2, I don’t know what to say.
I think you are very correct on what subscribers look for and especially when things go south you can see who has the right skills for trading/investing.
Again, thank you for the kind words and let’s go and make money together
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You are very welcome, Lars!
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Thanks VG2. Of course the gloves come off once Lars starts beating me, lol Just kidding.
There’s no reason to be hostile to trade leaders who seem to know what they are doing. The better we all do, the more investors will be attracted to C2. That will benefit us all.
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Spot on Ethos 
…
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