I guess this one is the strategy that has most subscribers at C2 right now.
I will not be surprised if it has 200 subscribers at peak.
Yes Algo, i am successful at real estate and operate several billboard ads, I have been studying ETFs for years, but I am very frugal.
And I don’t mince words. If you are spending a 1000 a year to only achieve 22% in a raging bull market, you are a sucker. Unless you didn’t know this is a bull market, and will be for several more months. Of course there will be a volatile stage mixed in. The real men will be weeded out in a bear market which NOBODY has ever mastered on C2. I have a feeling 75% of those fervent subs will drop off by then. Just so you guys don’t think I’m a complete A-hole, David is a marketing genius, lots off sizzle with that steak.
I know the feeling. I am shelling out $179 a month to publish my strategies and have the TOS capability on all of them the way I want it. Even though I am making way more than that trading, it just bugs me to no end that I am currently still paying out more to C2 than I am reaping in subscriptions. If we stick to it ang maintain good trick records surely that will change. Someone told be that it took them about 15 months. Obviously others have done it much faster.
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Gus, different people can be at very different places in their investing. For someone with $5000 they don’t mind losing, they might look for ultra high return systems hoping to double and triple it to get a better sized bankroll. And fees might be a large % of their initial investment so they’ll need to make a lot to overcome that cost. But for someone that has a $million to invest, they are not going to be putting that at risk in some crazy 200% per yr return scheme. They will be looking to make a reasonable return at low risk. A market-beating 20% on a $million is an excellent return and a three digit fee on that is nothing compared to almost any other management fee you will find out in the real world.
I agree with you about the bull market and how a bear market will separate the men from the boys. I expect a bear market to move me up the leaderboard, but we’ll have to see.
if you can make 100-200% on trading on ETF please start a strategy and take my money now. this is saying if you start trading a bitcoin strategy and make 2000% - 5000% per year is easy. in a “Normal” year $xiv only make around 30-50% buy and hold past 12 years, a better trader can prob double that just following contango curve and pay attention to the spread between spot vix/m1/m2 or just measure VRP.
please link us your 100-200% ETF strategy, im will pay double $39 just to participate.
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I didn’t.
More accurately: I didn’t see “numerous” (any?) such systems with >1 year track record.
Trust me: your system will show up on my radar (pass my filters) once it has 1 year worth of track record. 51.5 more weeks to go! (And before that, no matter what you claim, I will not touch it.)
Full disclosure: I am not a millennial.
Good luck!
Joseph
[How do you know/estimate the subscriber base of a system?]
I think it would be very good to know how many subscribers each strategy has. How big is this market? How is it growing? Is growing? What is the preference of investors? A little transparency could help us all.
Then it seems almost everyone’s confused, one person says many, another says a none. Yet another guy smugly says, “200% for Xiv is ez.” Leave me out of your little rants until you all get your facts straight.
Bottom line, how many purely etf systems are returning over 100% with many subs.
Possible reasons why many strategy providers have only few subscribers
In my opinion, there are at least 2 reasons why many C2-strategy providers are not getting more subscribers.
None of those reasons are the strategy providers fault.
What secret do I know? No secret!
Apart from C2, I’m also invested in two other big Social Trading platforms in Europe.
I’m not naming those platforms here in the forum (because I’m not allowed by C2 forum rules).
But I would like to show that there are other successful business models for Social Trading,
with ten-thousands of small investors, and growing numbers of new subscribers every year.
I know this, because the total amount of money managed by each strategy provider is fully visible to anyone.
So, why am I still investing with C2? It is because there are some very good signal providers here,
and because the other two Social Trading platforms are limited to Forex & Stocks only.
Reason #1 / Minimum Capital Requirement
Many strategies on C2 have a min. capital requirement of at least 25K-30K (some less, some more).
So, if a have a 100K portfolio, I HAVE to limit my subscriptions to maybe only 4-5 strategies.
Even though I’d like to invest and diversify in more than 10 strategies, I can’t.
C2 is a good Social Trading platform, if you have a lot of money to invest.
In this case you can diversify with more than 10 strategies, and fees won’t matter.
If you have only 5-10K to invest (like many here), you are very limited with available strategies on C2.
Actually C2 needs many more small investors to grow … not big investors.
Many small investors can make a big difference,
(Bitcoins 2017 rise is mainly because of many many Chinese & Indian small investors)
With those European Social Trading platforms it’s a complete different story.
They have a minimal capital requirement of only 100 Euro for each strategy, yes only 100 Euro!
Ten-thousands of small investors have only 1K invested there, or even less. But hey, they are invested!
And this also creates income for the signal provider & Social Trading platform.
For example, I have a 20K portfolio, and I’m invested in 10 different strategies, with no issue of diversification.
The strategies are available as Fintech-products and can be purchased/sold like stocks at specific Exchanges.
Reason #2 / Fees
C2-investors are also confined by the new subscription fee limitations.
(up to 3 strategies = 99$ / up to 5 strategies = 199$ / +5 strategies = 299$)
So, it’s only logic that small investors are limiting their subscriptions as much as possible.
And I believe that this is the reason why this year many strategy providers have lost subscribers instead of gaining new ones.
I had to cancel 3 good strategies myself, just to limit my portfolio to max. 5 strategies now.
I hope that in 2018 I will make more profits, so that I will be able to re-subscribe again.
With the Social Trading platforms in Europe I haven’t paid any subscriptions fees at all.
In 5 years of investment not one cent, not even to the signal providers. Only broker fees.
And the strategy providers are not paying anything to the Social Trading platform either, nada.
So, how is anyone making money from this different business model?
Easy. A performance fee (=income for the strategy provider) will be subtracted automatically each month,
but only if the investment reaches a new all-time-high (high-watermark)
A second fee (1% yearly) will be subtracted automatically for the social trading platform.
So, if you have invested 1Mio € you pay 1% fee, if you have only 1K € it’s still 1% fee.
It’s like a private “managed account”. It’s a fair system, and everyone is happy!
On the other side, with C2, the new subscription-fee policy is scaring old & new small investors away.
And there are lots of C2-competitors. So investors will subscribe only to the most stable & profitable strategies
(just to get even with the fees), because investors have to pay fees, even if the strategies do lose money.
As I wrote in the beginning, this all is just my opinion.
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I agree with most of this. I’m limiting adding systems based on how pricey they are, and how long it takes subs to gain interest. If anything else pops up, I’d jump on it in a NY. Second. Man it’s not enough you pay monthly, plus the skim when you get subs. I would much rather pay half up front and more on the back end. Listen up C2.
One question to the regulars, have long short systems fallen out of favor.
Subs prefer XivVxx long, than Xiv long then shorting Xiv when reversal comes correct?
David,
I just listened to your podcast. Very nice. First not sure why it doesn’t show up on itunes for me like the others. You may want to ask about that. Second, I was looking at your strategy that trades SSO which is basically a two times the daily move of the S&P500 correct?
When looking at some comparisons to just holding SSO I found this for the period of your results from 1/29/2015 until yesterday, 12/11/2017:
SSO buy and hold: 81% Total return with about a 23% drawdown.
Systematic Blue: 79% Total return with a 10% drawdown.
Perhaps this conversation is better elsewhere outside this thread, but I was curious if you could explain. Do you think your strategy is best as a means of reducing drawdowns rather than providing total return outperformance, or do you expect that eventually you will outperform?
Please don’t get me wrong. I know that often it is actually harder to outperform during the bull but easier to outperform during the bear. I am just curious if that is what you expect.
Hi Troy, thanks for the comments. The benchmark the system is designed to try to outperform is the S&P500 (the ETF, SPY). SSO is the instrument the strategy uses when the system is long. The system objective is higher return and lower drawdown than SPY on an annual basis. It is not trying to beat the return of SSO (especially not over a period as bullish as we’ve seen the last few years). That it has almost matched the return of SSO with less than half the drawdown is actually quite interesting, I hadn’t done the comparison.
I think if you do a similar comparison of the system to the S&P500 for each year you’ll see it’s achieving its objectives so far.
Of course anyone can just hold SSO and you will double the return of SPY as that’s what SSO does, but you’ll also double drawdowns which is not fine.
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"SSO buy and hold: 81% Total return with about a 23% drawdown.
Systematic Blue: 79% Total return with a 10% drawdown."
You can’t make that comparisons, Sir.
When you compare “buy and hold”, you are looking back, you compare something that already happened, so you know what is the result.
When he traded, he was dealing with future, he did not know what would happen after his trades.
When you compare buy and hold, you know the largest drawdown would be 23%, so you could just choose buy and hold AFTER FACT.
But he did not know 23% would be largest drawdown. What if the largest drawdown is 83%? So he need to exit position to avoid big loss. Not only he need to exit at that 23% drawdown, but he need to exit every dip because he did not know which dip would be 23%, and which dip would be 83%, and which dip would be only 0.23%.
The way he trades, he could avoid most loss if he encounter a big bear market .
The way you trade(to buy and hold), you could lost most of your fund when big bear market coming.
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It’s ez to proclaim buy n hold was the way to go after the fact.
Specsavers do a good Christmas deal at the moment!
@GusWeiss & @Golder I am not hating on DavidStephens. I just wanted to know if he expects it to beat SSO buy and hold total return or not. He politely explained that he is seeking to outperform the S&P 500 on a total return and drawdown basis - not SSO. It may outperform SSO buy and hold, but it isn’t his primary goal. I agree it is easy to say after the fact that buy and hold was better. However, it is easy to say before the fact that trading your strategies is better. It is harder to prove it later 
As a side note if you were not following his strategy in an IRA and had to pay taxes you would be paying taxes every year whereas with a buy and hold you would not have to pay taxes until you liquidate to spend or put into something else. There is no doubt that his long track record that shows high returns and low drawdowns is very admirable and worth considering as a part of our portfolios.
Taxes are a killer for any short term trading system, especially if you live in a state like California. That’s really the unfortunate thing for American traders. But not everyone pays those level of taxes, and not everyone lives in America.
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I agree! I live in America in a high tax state. So, I pretty much do all my short term trading in IRA’s whenever possible - my active trading/collective2 returns are much higher than my mutual funds. I would rather park my Ferrari in the garage rather than the Honda, if you know what I mean.
