My system is doing pretty well. It never had a losing month and has earned almost 10% in 3 months. I signed up with C2 thinking my system would get subscribers but I haven’t got any yet. I realize it’s still new on C2, but should I bother renewing my membership? I write articles for Seeking Alpha (http://seekingalpha.com/author/ben-sender) so I could stand losing this area of my business.
Thanks
[LINKSYSTEM_62867893]
I think it would take you about 1 to 3 years to get subscribers. I haven’t had much interest in my systems, and I’ve been here a lot longer then you have and my systems are top ranked.
I’m only here to track my performance to show to others. I don’t believe that most are making anything.
I haven’t been tracking my discretionary performance for past 2 months. I would have placed about 7 trades with 7 winners out of 7. So, I am either going to close it or turn it back on.
I think Matthew offers a worthwhile service. But, I don’t get a sense that it will attract serious investors. For example, he highlights the high fliers and the bombs. Little attention is made to systems, like mine, that have been consistently profitable over a long period of time.
Benjamin, your numbers look good but your equity curve shows no direction. When your equity curve begins to move upward subscribers may begin to gain interest. Your system is also very young. Typicaly the young systems that gain attention are the ones with very strong equity curves.
At this stage your system requires time and direction as indicated by your equity curve.
Don’t get discouraged. It takes a really good system for people to subscribe. I honestly don’t think people on this site are looking to use their 401k savings on a system here even if you outperform their current mutual funds on their 401k. I think most people here have investment money but they are looking for a system that pays back quick. You are also competing with other system which have better gains, so ask yourself why would they invest their money on yours and not the others. Give it some time or make it more profitable.
I agree and that was what I thought was happening. Although, an equity curve is meaningless, in my opinion. The line doesn’t have to go straight up, as I discuss in my System Description. If one does want to pay attention to returns, the % gain is much more valuable. The system doesn’t place any trades when there is no good opportunities, which may look bad on the line, but makes it much harder for it to lose. This is how every month has been a winner. Also, my system has a much lower risk than those systems. Topaz lost over 40% while I usually don’t even invest 40% at a time. Returns don’t mean much without knowing the risk. That’s a real problem with C2. You don’t know how much was risked on each trade (stop-loss orders for example aren’t shown) until you find out the hard way (subscribing and suffering a max-loss). Lastly, my system is $15 a month and has no minimum account size. I made the account size for the C2 paper trades to be $4500 just to show that, even though it makes commissions have a much bigger dent in the shown returns (so it is actually earning more). Thanks for the suggestions and I do realize what most subscribers are looking for; an exponential P/L and huge gains, even if they’re unsustainable. I hope my consistency will attract more subscribers soon.
Thanks
[LINKSYSTEM_62867893]
Your system looks good. I belive you will gain subscribers when you have a longer track record. I read your artical on seekingalpha, you did a very good job.
Thanks! There are multiple articles from me on SA if you want to read them. There will also be more to come.
Ben Sender
[LINKSYSTEM_62867893]
I think safer systems like yours needs more time to get subscribers than a riskier system, just the way it is. By the way Stop loss orders are shown at least when you are auto trading the system. Since Gen3 auto-trading is in sync with your broker it shows you the actual orders and real quotes. Also subscribers can automatically set stop orders or modify the developer’s order as well. I just looked at the main page of a system I’m subscribed to and it shows a stop order on recent trade signals.
I think what is not making your system as attractive as others are the cost related to trading. Think about it, commissions$$, auto-trade cost$$, subscription fees$$, etc do put a dent on any system. One of the reasons Topaz is successful is because you are trading in large amounts $$$ so these fees don’t affect the outcome as much, but it is harder to find subscribers with large amount of money to trade. Give it a few more months and see what happens. I’ll keep it on my watch list.
Ben,
I have subscribed to dozens of systems at various times in the last year or two and have the money to invest but I have lost enthusiam and stopped autotrading completely because of the lack of customer support from C2. I have sent 3 or 4 emails over the last 3 weeks and have yet to get a reply from any of them. I don’t expect refunds for money lost from perceived flaws in their system but I do expect them to make an attempt to correct them for the next time and this just doesn’t seem to be happening.
I wonder what level of comfort your pool of potential customers has with this platform. And, there sure seems to be a lot more system owners than subscribers when you look at the forums.
Ouch, Mike, that kind of hurts.
I do apologize for the lack of response. But in my defense (and it is only me that can respond to the specific questions you’ve asked), you have some fairly intricate questions about on-screen reporting, marked-to-market pricing, etc. All of the requests you have made are very valid, and understandable, but some of them fall into the “feature request” bucket, and I just can’t immediately act on them.
But I do apologize for not responding to say as much. I am trying to work through the backlog of issues that are on my plate. Not very successfully, I admit. But I do hope to get to most of them shortly. I did want to post a public response to your forum post, and to apologize, but I will also respond via email as well.
Acknowledged (including the pain all around). Encouraged by your response Matthew.
Julio,
What I meant was that when you are viewing a system, as a potential subscriber, you can’t see how much was risked on each trade. Seeing the orders when you’re already subscribed isn’t much of a help in evaluating the system. In response to costs, requiring a low minimum doesn’t mean a low maximum. The fact that my system can be used on almost any account size doesn’t mean the costs are higher for a large account. In fact, my system places less trades than a system like Topaz which lowers costs. Lastly, my subscription fee is a tenth of Topaz’s, and you only pay when the system is profitable.
Ben Sender
[LINKSYSTEM_62867893]
I got you. I guess that’s one of the reasons C2 allows developers to offer free trials. My other comment about investing large amounts instead of small ones was not regarding your system but in general. Topaz wouldn’t be very profitable if you didn’t invest at least $10k per trade. I think his lifetime average is around 1% gain per trade. Since after the latest draw down it has been around 3% which is very good, but his average trade investment based on the model is a whooping $89k per trade during the same period. you can always scale down but you won’t get the same results as the model.
I’m going to use his lifetime average to make a point.
1% gain on $10k = $100 - fees ($20) = $80 gain per trade on average.
1% gain on $2k = $20 - fees ($20) = $0 gain per trade on average.
The fees also depend on how often the system trades and the broker the investor uses.
These numbers are just examples made simple for most people to understand, so you are welcome to argue, but I’m just making the point that you need money to make money!!! even on a good system like Topaz.
Hopefully, I will start my own systems as well in the near future. I made a suggestion to have a different type of model that uses fixed trade amounts instead of total investment amount. This is helpful in many ways. Based on my model, if a user has $10k to invest it will invest on 5 separate stocks of $2k each reducing your exposure to a single stock. More trade signals will be ignored until you free up one stock to buy another or gain enough profit to buy 6 stocks instead of 5. The good part, it will attract subscribers with limited investment $2k-$10k, the bad part, it will take an average of at least 2% per trade to just beat commissions and other fees. No an easy task.
I was going to suggest to trade more often on your system. Thanks, Julio.
Market Predictor:
I would disagree with your 9/12 statement that you don’t get a sense that Mathew’s service “will attract serious investors.” How do you define “serious investor”? By the size of their account? By the amount of time they spend studying possible investments and then committing their available funds to different systems?
By those definitions, I would think there are some pretty darn serious investors that come to C2?
–Josh
I agree with Josh if you define “serious investor” like I do as committing their investment on a system at C2. On the other hand I don’t think C2 has serious investors willing to invest their savings on a C2 system. An example would be, I have $100k on my 401k, $25k on long term investment and $10k to buy stocks when there is a good opportunity. I think C2 gets the good opportunity money in other words a place were they could make a good amount of money with some risks. I’m not just talking about risk on the actual system alone but risking their money on a developer they have no rapport with or has been screened by a reputable investment company or organization.
The beauty of C2 is that anyone can create a system but is also it’s downfall, since there is not control on who can create one. It’s up to subscriber to figure that out and there is nothing even if the system is free that would make an investor comfortable or willing to invest on a C2 system than good performance over a long period of time. Julio
