First up, as a new user of Collective2 I think the concept is brilliant! Well done on coming up with, and successfully implementing such a great idea. I’ve already subscribed to one system and am currently paper-trading it to get a feel for real-world performance before diving in with real money.
That said, there are a few problems I’ve come across with the site that worry me:
* Broken links/inconsistencies. For example, after no activity on the site for a while, doing certain things (e.g. viewing the C2ATI API?!) requires logging in again, however after following the provided link to login and submitting details, I always get a ‘Page not found’ response. I have to actually click ‘Log out’ then ‘Log in’ at the top of the page.
* More worringly, the site seems flakey and extremely slow some times, particlarly around market open. My subscribed system put out a market order signal that was filled at C2 almost 6.5 minutes before Trader68 was able to receive the signal and execute the order in my paper trading account (that’s the worst; others were 10-20 seconds before), and the Trader68 log shows it loses connection to C2 on average every couple of hours throughout the day. Not very encouraging!
I notice a lot of the site seems to be based on Perl/cgi-bin scripts. While simple to implement, my experience is that doesn’t scale well. Are there any plans to provide a more performant and/or scaleable platform that will help alleviate these problems? As it is I’m very apprehensive about trusting a large chunk of money to any intraday systems due to the poor site performance.
The site slowness is a new thing in past month or so, and C2 is upgrading hardware. I can tell you in 4 years of being here, 95% of the time the site is super fast and responsive.
Stop press!
Looking again through the Trader68 log messages I see I may be misinterpreting the figures, and it may not have taken 6 1/2 minutes for one particular signal to feed through. If so, my apologies - don’t want to go spreading false info.
However I believe the other points (particularly the worrying repeated ‘connection lost’ messages) still stand.
I agree, that I am increasingly concerned with performance issues.
20 sec can already be much in fast markets.
So, I hope the upgrade will happen soon as the concerns are already around for some time…
If I go back when I started (6 months), I have the impression, things were considerably faster.
Whether this is done by hardware update, code rewrite or both, I do not care, but that it happens soon, I think everyone with money on the line cares…
Klaus
Yep. Think I’ll hold off putting any real money on the line until that happens.
If we are the developer of the system, it would be nice during market hours to not have a connection lost or time out feature so that I don’t have to re-log into the site to place a new trade. I don’t know if this is a feature that you automatically log us out if we are idle.
Also, I had major problems canceling and replacing my 1st order of the day so much so that it turned into a loss even though in my real trading account that order was profitable.
Also, if it is on my end, I know for example ninja trader will just auto-reconnect you if you have internet issues. I would suggest that unless I actually log out of C2 during the day, my session should not expire.
Finally, why not have C2 if not place an order if its an invalid symbol. You stated in a previous order of mine, I typed an invalid symbol, yet C2 still places the order. I know in my stock broker and future broker accounts, they will not place orders for symbols that don’t exist. I would think this would be an easy programming fix.
If we are the developer of the system, it would be nice during market hours to not have a connection lost or time out feature so that I don’t have to re-log into the site to place a new trade. I don’t know if this is a feature that you automatically log us out if we are idle.
Also, I had major problems canceling and replacing my 1st order of the day so much so that it turned into a loss even though in my real trading account that order was profitable.
Also, if it is on my end, I know for example ninja trader will just auto-reconnect you if you have internet issues. I would suggest that unless I actually log out of C2 during the day, my session should not expire.
Finally, why not have C2 if not place an order if its an invalid symbol. You stated in a previous order of mine, I typed an invalid symbol, yet C2 still places the order. I know in my stock broker and future broker accounts, they will not place orders for symbols that don’t exist. I would think this would be an easy programming fix.
