hey guys
i have been looking at this website for the last week
and im asking myself one thing howcome not all america is filty rich
everything seems to work perfect not only that if someone has a system working for him why would he sell it to others instead of trading it himself and make some real cash out of it
i think is that what im saying is are this "systems" or "results" real is there real money to be mad on this web site
if anyone of you have traded anything from this website lately and made some money i would love to see the trades and facts if possible
what is the realistic gain or loss from this website how could i choose a "winning strategy" or a "winning system" and can anyone of you advice which brooker to choose
I’ve traded a couple of systems and my results have matched those on C2 pretty closely. I’ve stayed away of systems that are bound to have a lot of slippage, but I am trading intraday systems and I get pretty much the same results as the hypothetical ones. Unfortunately, I was with [LINKSYSTEM_29261068] during its collapse, so overall I’m down since joining C2. That’s the main thing you have to watch out for: collapsing systems. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The loss wasn’t in vain, though, I’ve learned a lot about risk management, exposure, etc.
A strategy that suits you will depend on your goals, risk tolerance, available capital, and so on. There’s no such thing as a certain winning strategy, the best you can do is control risk. And the broker will in turn depend on your strategy.
"… if someone has a system working for him why would he sell it to others instead of trading it himself and make some real cash out of it?"
The answer to this is fairly straightforward for us vendors. Most of us do indeed trade our own systems but our gains are very much limited to our own capital * % gains. Selling signals expands the pie.
I’m a system subscriber as well and believe that subscription fees pay for themselves over time. IMO, modelers here are much smarter than MBAs working at mutual fund companies or people simply passed a financial advisor test.
My advice is to stay away from C2 and its trading systems. Most of the systems usually collapse sooner or later, so if you choose the systems which are performing better until now, chances are you will get caught in one or more collapsing systems very soon. Subscribing many different systems to spread the risk is not a viable solution: you will make a lot of trades and on average you will end flat or down including slippage and fees, much work for nothing. Furthermore, the really good and reliable systems on C2 are really few, so it’s not so easy to find many different good systems to choose from.
90%+ of systems are gamblers. The good systems became so few that recently I noticed a vendor mirroring the exact same trades from another vendor’s system to prop up performance of his struggling systems. In that way, choosing different system to spread the risk becomes really hard (you end up to choose 2 or more systems which are exactly the same, cloned !).
I think that on C2 you might get lucky and catch few great months in one or more systems and make money for a while, but on average and in the long run you will be lucky if you break even after fees but odds are high that you will end up with a loss. I think the whole game is not worth it. Better find a job 
All IMO of course.
Your answer is productivity. Not all citizens are as productive. The ones who are get paid way more. So if you’re not filthy rich, better find ways of increasing your productivity. At the heart of c2 is a vendor trying to improve someone’s productivity by showing them how to trade. If you’re not into that, then, yeah, this probably isn’t the site for you. I pay big attention to the c2 score, especially ones above 900. Beau
IMO, modelers here are much smarter than MBAs working at mutual fund companies or people simply passed a financial advisor test.
No doubt on here about that.
"I pay big attention to the c2 score, especially ones above 900."
Why do you give so much attention to this? I have seen traders on here who I rate very highly with a fairly mediocre score because they have a failed system (which can subsequently make them a better trader), and others who have achieved relatively little but have inexplicably high ratings.
I think the current way of evaluating would be more useful if it were done per system rather than per vendor so that rather than the ‘verification badge’ showing the same number for each of those vendor’s systems it could show a number for each system that better reflects it’s performance.
You are usually very critical of Craig and his systems but he has a rating higher than yours! So does that tell you more about his systems, yours, or the rating system itself?
"My advice is to stay away from C2 and its trading systems."
So, why are you here?
Amir - There are all sorts of reasons why people become system traders at C2. In some cases they are here for the thrill/challenge - it is a real ego boost to develop a system that shines and demonstrate it to the world. Most indicate that it helps with their discipline. In some cases they don’t have the capital to trade, in other cases they are great system developers but terrible traders with their own money.
With a site like C2 you should start slowly. Find a nice conservative system and subscribe, follow it for a while before putting real money into it. C2 is a mine field but if you study and learn you can navigate the mine field. I suggest starting with David Odle’s Bottoms Up. The price is right, he has held his own thru this market volatility and is achieving over 30% per annum trading stocks. He is quiet - doesn’t post much. You will find the quiet ones have the most to offer.
Steve
www.stockmarketstudent.com
[LINKSYSTEM_22381250]
Being here doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea to follow C2 systems with real money, which is the question asked in first post of this thread.
so this is a hobby for you instead then…
Undoubdtely there is a lot to learn here and I like the idea behind C2 very much. I think C2 is just great, the problem is the quality of the offered trading systems, which on average is miserable with few exceptions IMO.
This could change in the future of course, and I hope so.
I hope that one day, C2 will attract more of the "really good" traders around. For now, I noticed that some people that I consider "great traders" and I talked with, are skeptical about C2 and not interested in it.
Maybe things will change sooner or later.
"the problem is the quality of the offered trading systems, which on average is miserable with few exceptions IMO. "
that is the problem everywhere, including timertrac, hulbert, timerdigest and others. There aren’t “really good” traders out there, just waiting to be found offering systems for lease. They are 99% + garbage. The difference of C2 is that it lances the pretenders, via equity curves, statistics, vendor reputation, etc.
Like everywhere, the number of “good traders” is far far less than people imagine. The idea that 95% of leveraged/active traders lose their money way underestimates the truth. Figure another 4% break even or make sporadic/small amounts. Of the remaining 1%, most do OK-to-making a living. A few make a killing. And most of those “killers” likely work in the industry.
That said, with significant effort on the part of a hungry trader (willing to do a lot of effort and study), there are 1-2 interesting systems to be found on C2. And there are a handful of decent traders here.
I think "quality" is a very relative concept. E.g. when you say the quality of a Ford Focus is miserable, perhaps this is true when you compare the car to a BMW 7 series. So, which other trading systems, hedge funds or mutual funds with multi-year public track records are you comparing to when qualifying most C2 systems as miserable?
There is never a shortage of people that want to make it rich - quick. Look at the ethics of our society from the most down-and-out to the creme-of-the-crop. Most have failed themselves miserably and are looking to sell their soul for the almighty buck!
That being said, the MARKET (as tracked elsewhere and by C2) is the GREAT EQUALIZER.
Let this sink into your (proverbial) thick skulls. With great reward comes much risk. After all, any Average Joe can dollar-cost average into index funds over 20-30 years and make it BIG without much effort or risk at all!!
Then there are those looking for that needle in the haystack that is going to place before them on a silver platter or prove to provide the goods. Say a good return with contained risks and proper money management for a year or so. Theoretically then, almost anyone could plunk down a relatively small investment of say 20-50k and in no time (5 years) become a millionaire!
Any one with common sense and basic mathematical skills can dissect said scenario and prove the unlikelihood of this happening. For one you would need a HUGE annual return compared to the benchmark indexes, said vendor would need to not hiccup or make any novice mistakes and will need to provide said service for a somewhat long period of time. FAT CHANCE, since if he/she were that good they wouldn’t continue as a C2 vendor for THAT long.
Furthermore, the MARKET has a way of bring even the elitist of fund managers back to earth in just a few years. Do some research and you will see that most “successful” Hedge Funds may make that high annual return for a year or two. . .but can’t keep it up - thereby depriving individuals of their lofty goal of making it rich quick - even if they had the cajones to plop down 50k (remember, these individuals aren’t TRUE risk takers and want you to prove to them first. . .or better yet, simply give them something for nothing, lol)
With high reward comes high risk!
That being said, the REALITY is for a site like C2, to sift through some 5,000 systems and find the precious few that have a decent annual return (much smaller than 100%), statistics and track record and plop 1/3 of a decent sum down. If it further proves itself, add another third and lastly - if again - the last third. Perhaps in a 3-5 year period you may make $1M and retire to that island you are dreaming about!
Caveat: Do not expect this to actually happen or you will sadly lose whatever self-worth you may have had at first. Expect reality and that is that to beat the market you need to be on the side of a very small part of the majority and again - - with high return comes high risk, otherwise we’d all know where to put our money and plan to be on our island in a few years, lol.
Regards,
Gilbert
[LINKSYSTEM_31138456]
I actually think I could use my skills as an equity chart reader and find the very best emerging curves at C2 that have momentum on their side, diversify (like with stock investments) amongst a few - - keep my STOP of losses at a specific target of say 10%. If I see topping or slowing momentum - - bail. . .and put the $$$ to work in a new up-and-comer, rinse & repeat. THAT may get a cool mil or two in a fairly short while. I just don’t have time I want to allot toward this demonstration.gA
I know at least 3 guys I consider "really good traders" but when I talked about C2, they were not interested. One has been recently recruited by some kind of fund manager "in the industry" and I lost contacts with him.
"I actually think I could use my skills as an equity chart reader and find the very best emerging curves at C2 that have momentum on their side, diversify (like with stock investments) amongst a few - - keep my STOP of losses at a specific target of say 10%. If I see topping or slowing momentum - - bail. . .and put the $$$ to work in a new up-and-comer, rinse & repeat. THAT may get a cool mil or two in a fairly short while. I just don’t have time I want to allot toward this demonstration.gA "
If you can do that with equity curves on C2 then you should be able to apply the same strategy to trading the markets but without exposing yourself to the risk of thrid party vendors. You are applying exactly the same principles, equity curves and price movement are one and the same.
@Jon,
You mean it hasn’t been universally accepted that I fully possess said talent and skills? Shocking!gA
Question: how many people that hang out at C2, ET, etc. honestly think they can find success with trading to make it BIG?
Also, how many people that want to make it with investing/trading do you think understand what they are looking for?
What I am referring to is what it takes as outlined in my above post to “find a good trader” and somehow transpose that into a $1M+ account for themselves. That is why so many - like Wall Street types - would take the short route and rob a cool mil through some collateral debts scheme or CEO bonus, than put in the hard work to make REALITY actually work for them, lol.
Regards,
Gilbert
I do not know why, but it seems glaringly obvious to me (major part of my guiding parameters, since 1998 or so) that unless you are walking down the street and trip over a bag of money with $1M in it, the REALITY is that to make it BIG you will need a modest amount of starting capital and the balls to place it into a strategy or system with a decent annual average for 5 years or so.
It is also glaringly obvious (to me at least) that the higher the annual average exceeds the S&P 500’s historical average the more IMPOSSIBLE it is for a successful 5 year period to actually become reality. I’m not sure what the index average is but let’s say 10%. So if you find a “system” that can be successfully traded with your precious $50k for 5 years. . .a 15% or 20% or 25% or God forbid a 50% or 100% return, this would indeed be NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE. That is just the way massive amounts of traders that come and go year after year will continue to prove to us all.
So why is anyone CLAIMING ANYTHING upon having or finding a brief record of success AT ANY ANNUAL AVERAGE >25% (again FUGETABOUTIT with a 50 or 100% return, lasting).
I guess we really are a world of suckers - - at least that is what Wall Street and Washington are banking on, lol.
Regards,
Gilbert
FYI: got your crash helmets on!?!
[LINKSYSTEM_31082140]
I believe the proper term for it is "performance chasing."
