Assumption.
You skipping on purpose important parameters like time being private. There is the difference between 3 months and 1 year or longer and it changes completely the picture and your simple No becomes more complex Yes.
Give me a good argument why systems should be kept private for any period of time.
If traders wish to experiment with systems before they offer them to the public, thatās legit, they donāt need to list them on C2 at all.
If they do, but hide the results unless they are good, this creates the ability to do the above described scheme.
To allow private trading/hedging from IB account that trades others C2 strategies as subscriberā¦
Ok, thatās one, but in any case turning that private āfor hedging / private trading onlyā system to be public at some point will create the issues I pointed above. So, if you have permanent private systems Iād agree with you thatās legit.
How many developers wish to pay fees and incur delays to place their private trades through C2, instead of using another IB account is another question.
Answer is simple. Everything depends of account size. Sometimes splitting funds cost more that broker transmit.
free for a year let people get addicted to the gains and then you can charge $75 and everyone will be more than happy to pay.
If someone can make me addicted to gains, I can pay $99 
There are differences of opinion here and thats fine. Your argument for not going private is one way to look at it, but not the only way. I started Private because I needed to see that the Broker Transmit function worked properly. It didnāt. I was taking signals from my TradeStation platform to make trades in C2 and it required some re-writing of the code since C2 couldnāt interpret built in functions in TradeStation, such as trailing stops. But re-writing the code lead to other problems and as a result the initial track record on C2 was terrible, unlike my track record at TradeStation, so I reset it when I got it working correctly. This had nothing to do with me trying to deceive the public or hiding poor trading skills, as you put it. I would have been an idiot to promote my system Before making sure the Broker Transmit functions worked correctly.
At this time Iām doing the same with another system I have Private. Iām trying out the new Platform Transmit function and am not completely satisfied yet. There are issues with excessive slippage and missing trades in a fast market. Iām still evaluating if this will work and if I can use it at all. Should I go public anyway? Promote a system that may not work as intended because of transmit glitches? I would think not.
If you go through a quick technical testing period itās no big deal - but in principle I donāt see any subscriber dumb enough to give a lot of weight to several trial trades, nor should those trades be considered any great embarrassment.
Anyone who ever automated a strategy had to face testing periods. The way to go through those without any noticeable effects on your account / record is either start with minimal quantities if possible (forex / stocks) or otherwise run a sample system that exits very soon after the entry, or keeps very tight stops / targets, avoiding any sharp moves. I donāt see why you need to promote it while youāre testing, and if it isnāt free there is really no āriskā someone will subscribe to your strategy before youāre ready.
$75 for a system with constant gains, i.e. your own ATM? Tell that to all the hedge fund managers and other professionals that take a minimum of 20% of the profitsā¦
Further, your comment above clearly recommends using private mode in order to create a track record, and not due to any technical reasons, and you explain you did it yourself. Your last statement therefore is far from being convincing.
Luckily for you and for others using such practices, most users arenāt well informed and will give little consideration to whether a system was private or not, as long as you manage to show high returns for say a few weeks or a month.
The next cynical step you may take (like too many others) is to promote it heavily based on this short period, then decrease the risk as much as possible to arrive to more or less flat equity curve that will still look ok due to the āgreatā start.
GalBarak
- Thereās little to no interest in a system that lacks a track record. Your insinuation that wanting to build a track record before showing off the system is in some way shady, suspect and generally bad may apply to some developers, but certainly not all. I take offence to that insinuation as my intentions have been totally honest, i.e. wanting to provide to the public a working system (technically) and provide a track record that shows what they can expect.
- Even a majority of the systems that arenāt Private initially fail and leave their subscribers in pain. Anyone can have a string of good luck, regardless if itās Private or Public. .Remember the darling system ConservProfit and his follow up EA? Donāt think that one was ever private, yet thats little consolation to the Investors who lost Money.
So GalBarak, stop demonizing those wishing to start out in Private mode. New debelopers to C2 are best acclimated as to the idiosyncrasies of C2 by first testing the technical functions in Private mode. Itās not necessarily evil. 
I think I wrote clearly, and with all due respect there is a limit on the amount of time one can spend in debates - I guess readers can draw their own conclusions from the different views presented. Everyone is responsible to take the precautions they see fit.
GalBarak, I think you make some excellent points. It seems like C2 should be a place for people who already have a proven system and want to share it with others, not for people who want to test out a system to see if it worksā¦there are numerous other ways to do that. Others have made some good points as well ā there is probably a need to test out the technical/interface aspects of the C2 experience, and there are some who want to have a private strategy that they can invite their own contacts to subscribe to, but not the general public. So, in both of those cases, it seems like a PERMANENT private strategy option would work just fine.
The danger with the temporary private strategies is that āwhat is intended for good, some will use for evil.ā There are those who will do as GalBarak suggested and try multiple different, inverse, highly leveraged strategies with no real cost of failure and if one of them by luck does well, go public with that and leave the rest hidden. The general public will not know that while this one strategy doubled or tripled in a few months the other strategies went bankrupt, and that it may have absolutely nothing to do with the value of the strategy and everything to do with what happened to be going on during that period.
So, if others agree, maybe we could ask Collective to consider a Permanent Private option instead of the Temporary Private option that currently exists ā primarily to protect subscribers from people who are trying to game the system with the temporary private option. It seems like that gives system developers what they need and provides more transparency in order for everyone to make better decisions.
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Or maybe private strategy can only TOS strategy. In this case concerns above does not matter.
Hi David. I can agree somewhat, but also feel that itās unnecessary and would make little difference, if any. New problems and aspects would keep popping up anyway. Take for exampel the event of a few months ago whereby the developer of ConservProfit launched his new ConservProfit EA, riding on the success of his main system which had like 300 subscribers. Many jumped on, assuming that the stellar profit run would continue, only to see it crash and burn and take them with it. I bet they had wished he tested it out first in Private mode before taking it public! Making Private mode a permanent function will keep people, like ConservProfit EA, away from it.
Besides, from what I can tell you can always see all the strategies that a developer has ever had by clicking on his name and checking. He canāt āhideā strategies that went south, if he did as you suggest, trade multiple systems in Private mode and then only go public with the one that worked. From what I understand all his work is archived there for everyone to see. If not, then that is what C2 should work at changing. In the end it comes down to the same basic principles: Buyer beware and due dilligence.
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David, I think that your idea to make the private strategy āpermanent privetā is good for the subscribers BUT not good for C2 and they will never do that of course because they will lose subscribersā¦
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I donāt see any technical reasons to go Privateā¦Itās already works 18 months on live mode and the connection to C2 is goodā¦
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The main question which I have in my mind is how a subscriber feel when he see a strategy with a low price or even with $0? Does he feel that the developer is not sure about his strategy and as a result he want to be on the safe side so in case of heavy losses, nobody will come to him with complaintsā¦
I am pretty sure that when the price is high and the strategy has a good track record, the subscriber feel that it is good strategy but maybe he will not subscribe because he has only $10K and he will take higher risk than he was ready to take because of the high subscription feesā¦
So maybe the answer is lying between the $50-$99ā¦
This price is suitable for almost any account size and it is still low but not too lowā¦
- Is there anybody here with good strategy which started with $0 and now charging $$$ ?
- What about the āpsychological priceā of $50-$99?
On the end of the day, nobody subscribe to strategy because it cost $50 or $99. People subscribe to strategy because strategy has track record over certain time (for everyone is different) and makes money and the subscription price make sense compared to $ amount, they want to invest.
Robert, decision is yours. My suggestion is to go few months free (6 is a good number in the middle), so people can run it on demo accounts a get comfortable. And If strategy performs and you have nice base of subscribers, set price to $99 (volume always will make more money from subscription point of view). Also other your strategies can get more visibility.
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Thanks to all the participants who contributed to this interesting discussion ā¦
I learned about āunusualā ways to introduce successful strategies in C2 ā¦ Hope not to see a lot like these around in the near future ā¦
I decided to take the middle road and charge only $ 79 so that the strategy would suit both, to the regular and the professional investor.
Final Note: There is no correlation between my new strategy https://collective2.com/details/112239805
and my other strategies in C2
Thanks again.
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My advice? From a potential subscriber? Because of your history of being a successful developer ( congrats BTW ) I would start @ $99 a month for the rest of 2017. List your backtest results under the description including drawdowns. If your strategy is working well, reward those who are loyal by continuing that $99 price indefinitely to them & raising to $125 or $150 a month in 2018 for newbies. As long as you are priced about the same as your competitors with similar returns/drawdowns, you should be good. Do you want 50 long-term followers @ $99 0r 25 potential in & out short termers @ $150? Free months are not necessary with your history and backtest results listed under subscription.
