Just find it amusing - people not only brag about their 1-3 months systems, now moved to praise systems that are yet to take a single trade. One guy will do 4% monthly in his sleep and 100% if he’s awake, another will predict market bottoms “with no problem” 
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I´ve never stated that I would predict anything, read more carefully. I said “until the hardest time is over” which implies that I´m not anticipating anything. In fact anyone (with some experience) can see that turning point who has eyes and a VIX chart in front of them. That has nothing to do with seeing a market bottom though it´s somewhat correlated most of the time.
Furthermore I´m not bragging when I say I let my system speak for itself. Seriously GalBarak get your negativity under control, would be much healthier for everyone.
@v1Trader I personally find it much more difficult and prone to overoptimization to switch short/long vola than defining simple rules when to not short vola. But that´s the good thing about trading, there are many ways to proft.
Edit: We somewhat derailed this thread so I at least will comment no more unless there is something to contribute to the thread topic.
Out of all VIX strategies in C2, I have yet to see a single one that can time market.
All of them got big drawdown during market down trend.
Nor I can see anyone capable of seeing a turning point in VIX either by a chart or anything else.
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Empty words AlexanderG. I asked a question - did you do any trading during 2008? You conveniently ignored it. Well, I can tell you that most money managers, many talented people, thought they knew the hardest time was over. And they were wrong. And then thought so again. And they were wrong again. On the other hand others predicted it will be back to 1929. They were wrong too. But of course you would have known everything if you’ve traded back then like others with a bit more experience here. This will stay in the realm of "if"s.
I recommend you spend more time actually trading and less explaining how you plan to trade in the future or how you would have traded in the past.
You might be taken more seriously then.
I agree with @Aaa123 that we derailed the topic, and will bow out after this one.
I agree with @GalBarak that trading in the hard times and even through moderate drawdowns is difficult at best, both for traders and for their investors. I was not actively trading during 2008, and can only speak personally to more moderate drawdowns and market troubles.
I agree with @ss_ww that VIX strategies often suffer significant drawdowns, something no one particularly likes. Of all the C2 vol strategies with more than 6 months running, none have managed single digit drawdowns, those with returns greater than 100% have drawdowns greater than 20%, and with returns over 200% the drawdowns exceed 30%.
On this last point, I will offer that in fact many volatility strategies (my own included) accept substantial drawdowns as a companion of high returns overall. This is largely a consequence of the unique nature of contango’s influence on the vol funds and a reliance on analysis of the futures market to steer volatility strategies (rather than using technical analysis of volatility price action). VIX may mean revert beautifully, but vol funds largely do not, and stop loss orders commonly are detrimental to a vol-fund strategy’s performance. Vol strategies certainly do not match everyone’s investing tastes.
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Both of my volatility strategies have been around more than six months, neither has a draw down of more than 20% (although I am sure at some time they will), and both have returns of over 100% to date. See XIV Timer and Fast Nickles.
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The last six months have been about the best times in the volatility space in last few years. Not surprising all the new strategies are popping up around that time. The ones that have been around longer showed mixed performance in the Spring and even summer after Brexit. 2015 was a disaster for volatility strategies.
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Excellent, @C_J_, thanks for the correction. I was aware of your strategies but in the moment I did a rush search on “VIX” and “VOL” within the names in the grid and failed to do a more complete analysis. Your risk-adjusted returns are quite admirable. And I apologize in advance to other strategies I may have missed in my hurry.
And agree with @Elemental on how tough 2015 was, and how great 2016 was for vol. XIV and VXX were both down double digits in calendar 2015.
It’s cyclical – just like every other strategy on here. Gold was fantastic in first half of 2016. Terrible in latter half. ES strategies great since Trump election. Terrible now. Forex volatility was low in latter half of 2016 so strategies employing double down strategies (which are susceptible to nasty drawdowns once fully leveraged) thrived; now they are beginning to unwind.
People strongly underestimate the cyclical boost most high flying strategies get and overestimate trade leader skill in predicting future returns. Since there are so many strategies on here, there will inevitably be some strategy flying high off the back of a cyclical wave at the moment that will ultimately crash down several months later. Volatility, Forex, option selling… whatever. The party always ends. Diversification can help with smoothing out this inevitable phenomenon.
This problem isn’t unique to C2, though; even hedge funds are susceptible to this. Paulson and Co., a legendary hedge fund that “predicted” the Great Recession is doing terribly now because they probably just got lucky and happened to be in at the right time and right place. There will always be contrarians and, whether they’re skillful or not, they will be proven right by circumstance and investors will confuse that with future success.
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I studied the strategies that once worked well and over time stopped working and I found out that at least one of the reason is that most of them operated without strict risk management (RM) and did not adapt to the ever-changing market. In fact, most of them operated under assumptions of over optimism …
Out of curiosity, I also looked at VIX strategies that are very successful today and I found out also here that most of them do not have strong RM as well. As a result most of the VIX strategies will experience significant changes when the market will be changed unless they will adopt strong RM that could significantly reduce the risk.
To this subject has less glamor and it is much boring compare than develope a new strategy so strategies developers do not bring inough attention to it.
I have 3 VIX strategies in C2 and I spend most of my time and my attention on RM. Basically my strategies is ready for 2008 every minute…
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Thanks @RobertPeterson, I’m glad you’re ready for 2008 every minute. I manage my risk by concentrating my time and attention on the trades, and do not cover tail risk insurance in the strategy itself, as many do. Perhaps I will add an additional volatility strategy with more finesse that tries to smooth the equity curve and protect from that type of black swan in the future, but for the present I chose the name Battle Axe to reflect this lack of finesse, and make it pointed in my description that subscribers should be prepared for drawdowns. I like to think I’m ready for 2008 as well… backtesting my strategy suggests 2008 would have been my very best year, with 2007 and 2015 being the least satisfactory calendar years.
I liked @LeslieGray’s suggestions in an earlier thread for subscribers to take on any strategy with an appropriate sizing so as to manage drawdowns within acceptable limits. His advice applies here quite well; one should never put too many eggs in one strategy basket.
I subscribe or have subscribed to a number of VIX strategies. Only one has had an active tail hedge which gives drawdown protection up to a 50% loss. I’ll take that. It is hard to make comment on some of the other strategies because they haven’t been around long enough.
In fact, where are all the VIX strategies on C2 with a trading history of two year or more? 
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For me this is one of the problems with the new rules about having a separate account for managing manual positions.
If I’m trading a strategy that, for example, switches between long positions is XIV and VXX, i’ll overlay my own tail hedge for added protection. It reduces return but helps me sleep at night.
When I will have to execute manual trades in a separate account from my autotraded strategies, those strategy developers will be losing a subscriber.
My VIX strategy started in late 2015. There was I think about 3 or 4 other VIX related systems. Early 2016 the market experienced about a 7% waterfall decline. It was not a fun time for most any strategy. I think a few of those strategies folded. I realized my strategy was too simplistic and (rather than abandoning it) have since refined it to handle various market environments. Since then - as somebody else posted earlier in this thread, lots of VIX systems have popped up like dandelions in the Spring. It will be interesting to see how all the VIX strategies will perform with some real market turmoil.
Good luck trading to all.
As has been mentioned, many new short volatility strategies have popped up on this website in the past year which isn’t surprising given how easy an environment it has been. There’s nothing special about basically just going long XIV from March 2016 until today and showing great performance and in most cases the less you know, and the less advanced your strategy is the more profitable it was. Just blindly follow the Vix term structure and money falls from the sky right?
Experienced volatility traders who can weather tougher markets like 2014 and 2015 (and whatever is coming in the future) will obviously have an external web presence outside of Collective2. Everybody and their dog was profitable in the last year, but only the ones with a focus on risk management will still be around in the future. www.volatilitytradingstrategies.com
I feel like this current easy environment is setting a lot of people up for a major fall…
Your system has 2 trades since May 2015, both open trades (not shown in Track Record)?
Ha, that’s funny. I totally forgot that I opened a couple trades in the freebie test account nearly 2 years ago. Haven’t come back since, so I guess they are still open from day 1, buy and hold style
I see. Any other verifiable track record?
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