Vendors with negative account balances

I just want to get people’s opinion on this. I think C2 would have a much better reputation if it filtered the vendors on this site. Particularly ones that not only blow up an account with a 100% loss very quickly, but those that lose beyond -50%, that is loss everything and owe 50% more, should not be allowed on this site. I can understand where it might influence the pocket book for you, Matt, but I think in terms of potential litigation, this is not such a far fetched idea.

I guess either pull them from C2 or simply start a new list called "Hot Contra-Traders"! That would make good bad like Phat made Fat good!

Sorry, I meant that would make bad good!

I never considered it C2’s fault that some vendors loose. So I don’t understand why C2 would have less credibility if that happens. On the contrary, it demonstrates that C2 is a neutral third party. For new traders it is also informative to see how easily many traders who boast about their trading experience crash within a few months.



There is one exception: I don’t understand how traders with a negative balance sometimes can continue trading. I believe that is not possible in reality. Am I wrong?

Take a look at my Broadsword Futures, I decided to stop trading and no longer support it and wrote a long narrative in the ‘long description’ to explain what I thought had gone wrong and the reasons behind everything. That was written on 1/20 but what happens is if you kill a system but don’t close the positions first then your statistics will continue to be updated, and once you’ve killed it you can’t go back in and close any positions. When I decided to no longer support it I was approaching a drawdown of 50% and had just gone negative but I see the stats now show it as being 640%!! and having gone into a negative balance of 75k which as you say in real life would be impossible. (Yes in theory something could gap and leave you with that negative, but this is something that has gone slowly day by day for months which would not be possible in real life without a margin call).



Anyway I guess the lesson is if you don’t want something to continue to damage your overall record once you’ve killed a system then make absolutely sure you’ve closed all the positions first before you kill it.



So as it affects me of course I would say this, but in response to Beau I think it would unfair to ban me because I now have a negative balance on one of my funds that I abandoned a couple months earlier.

Jon the same thing happened to me with my Target 50 signal. I asked Mathew about 6 times to take it flat for me. I don’t see any good reason to not to take the chart to a flat line. That way you could see what the signal was doing when it was supported.

I see you changed the name to reflect when it stopped trading, that’s a good idea, I might need to do that.

Thanks, now I understand what happened in these cases. I think that "killing" a system should be implemented as "close all positions". Or at least a margin call should be simulated when the balance continues to be negative.

Of course there are exceptions in your case, Jon. I don’t know why you didn’t close it out, though.

Definitely, Jules.