Matthew,
In many of the post here, there are talking about returned percentage, in my personal opinion, we are not in the winning competition, we do not care how much you gain. We are in the signal service, simple compare how much of the return percentage is no meaning at all. We should compare with returned percentage / same quantity ordered, then it is apple to apple, neither, as this is a free demo investment, people can buy as much as they can and make a good return percentage, it is non-realistic.
Would like to hear more from the room!!!
Return calculations are always based on the amount of capital in the account. Since everyone starts with $100K in their C2 hypothetical account, we are indeed comparing apples to apples.
Thus, C2 measures not only your accuracy for calling trades, but also your money management/risk management abilities as well.
Matthew
As an account grows beyond the original $100k, at some point, it is unrealistic to continue growing the account percentage wise due to liquidity problems of real trading. Can a system provider reset their account to $100K after a year of trading so the amount of shares traded would look more reasonable?
Matthew,
I might be way off here, but it seems to me the subscribers need to take responsibility for their on money management. Just because a system looks great does not automaticaly mean good money management. Poor systems might have good money management while good systems may not. How would a subscriber know the difference.
The way I see it, system venders provide signals, subscribers need to manage their money based on their personal finances, etc.
I must say I agree with that money management should be left to the subscriber. Using standardized returns would even the playing ground. This will also prevent vendors from swinging for the fences to make outrageous returns by buying 1000’s of a stock to make 2 cents profits which results in large dollar and percentage returns. If the returns are standardized, the percentage return will be based on the 2 cents over the price of the stock and this will be easy for prospective subsribers to see that profits are so small that any kind of slippage will wipe out profits. For futures and forex, the returns can be based on 3 x margin for example. This is how futurestruth track futures systems.
Also if a system is successful and the account grows, the vendor will be forced to buy larger and larger blocks of shares, or number of contracts which will result in unrealistic trades and as such will get penalized unfairly by receiving a lower realism factor.
Regards
- Fanus
How about a money management section at C2 for subscribers?
Uyen,
It’s realistic if you know from which point of involved capital your system start it’s degradation in performance. There is nothing new. From the point you have to start searching new picks or limit your capital involved in trading of the system.
However, I don’t agree with Matthew that we comparing apples to apples, because underlying prices are different for different instruments, but I have nothing to offer in the case 
Eu
Frank/Fanus,
I’m maybe not so high, but I always think that MM is part of any system. And I always think that for building MM you have to be familiar with a system with all the system nuances. It looks like I was wrong and anybody from subscribers can build MM for a system about which he/she has no idea. lol
Eu
Perhaps proven money managment systems could be plugged into any trading system, showing subscribers what might be best for them.
Frank,
Granted. Perhaps. So why to not offer subscribers MM that fits your system on hmmm… proved base, as a bonus ;)? As I said I might not understand your and Fanus idea. Sorry for that.
Eu
I would suspect many system providers might get a surprise if varying MM systems could easily be plugged into their systems.
Yes, MM is part of a system. But there are many different types of MM methodologies. My point is this is easier for a subscriber to compare different systems if their returns are standardized, than to have to understand the different types of MM methods different vendors use.
If a system work with trading one contract, then applying MM to it will amplify the results. Good MM to a bad system will not make it a winner, but will make your money last longer. Without standardized returns, potential subscribers not only have to try and figure out which system perform better than the other, but also have to figure out how much MM influence the returns. This is much easier to compare returns based on one contract, or one stock.
Right now the comparison between systems is made between percentage returns on the account and not on how well the actual trades are performing. For example, if you have two profitable systems giving the exact same signals and one vendor trade 10 contracts each time and the other one is much more conservative and only trade 1 contract each time, then naturally the one trading 10 contracts are going to have bigger returns on the account, although both are really the same. Just because some vendors are more conservative in their MM, they get penalized on annualized returns based on a 100K account. I don’t think systems should be compared based on how risky/conservative the vendors are, but should be based on how well the actual trades are doing based on a standardized way. If systems get compared based on actual trades, you will not have these systems making 500% a year based on fantasy trades risking the whole account on each trade. Actually, I think the way comparisons are made now, encourage vendors to be more risky and risk the farm on each trade to increase his/her account.
There are many good systems on C2 which will never show up on the best list, or hot hands because every week there are new systems on C2, risking everything, making 200% annualized returns, blow up and get replaced by the next new rogue system doing the same thing.
I will agree with one thing Eu said. This is difficult to build a MM system without understanding the nuances of the system. I would think any vendor would be happy and able to provide a potential subscriber of historical drawdown, average trade, average loss, average win, etc which will allow a subscriber to develop his own MM routine, or at the very least provide some guidelines.
Ok, I think I have rambled long enough now. The last thing I want is to be confused with Pal… 
Regards
- Fanus
Fanus,
We have a similar view point, in real life, I wonder does the people who post with such trade size are refect in their real life, they even do not understand what a good system should be. It is not just a matter of return percentage, it consist many others to make a good system. In my post on 4 major pair introduction, I listed what my trained system performed in the backtesting, and trade to trade records to let the subscribers have a clear idea what it should be, and I have a warning to tell people it is only backtesting history, also, for NN signal trading, do not follow it until couple days later after it learned.
Victor
Matthew,
In reality, when I subscribed to some of the well known signal service, they only give out signal, no MM is available.
Victor
