All the popular strategies are now gone. If you had to choose 5 systems to trade which ones would you choose?
Any specific capital are you referring to acquire 5 systems?
I doubt I will ever be in Vol strats again.
No strategies that hold overnight futures.
I would like to see more day trading strategies.
I do see 2 strategies I like right now.
4Q has an impressive backtest history available. If the market continues to slide, this strategy should make pretty good $ by being in SQQQ.
The only real danger I see with 4Q is if the market can’t make up it’s mind and goes pretty flat.
Payoff Matrix developer is a REAL pro. He is patient. Knows the worst case scenario before he even places the trade. It is my #1 pick.
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6 figure trading account. No options selling, no volatility systems, and a system older than 2 months.
I trade many systems, none of them went bust. My selection criteria are:
- No volatility systems unless they are hedged with options.
- No systems which short options, not even credit spread systems.
- No systems which have a high win ratio but low avg. profit to avg. loss ratio, in other words systems which do not follow the time honored principle “cut the losers short and let the winners run”, this eliminates all Martingale or Martingale like systems.
- No systems which add to losing positions, except when it is a legitimate practice to scale into the full position.
- No systems which had a high drawdown in the past, but this is subjective and depends what type of system it is.
- No systems which are very new, show initial impressive results and are heavily promoted by the vendor. Vendors who provide valuable and professional opinions on the forum are the exception, even if they are newcomers.
- I totally ignore C2 ratings and subscriber reviews
I do not provide any recommendation, everybody has to do his own homework and not rely on opinions of others.
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Please go ahead and list the systems you trade so I can research them. thanks
Agreed 100% your Payoff Matrix comments…I wasn’t sure about his monthly charge until I see his daily risk assessments before and during the market crash period. Most importantly he manages risk with stop-loss and he communicates clearly how much risk each and every position would expose…he is a REAL pro.
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I agree with what Norman and TT3 say as well. Payoff Matrix appears to be a good one for me. I am reviewing this TOS system as well as i move to not holding futures overnight. https://collective2.com/system112786719 His description also includes his website. If you have any thoughts on this system as well i would love to hear them. Strategy Description
Smart Bull Portfolio trades major US indices such as ES, NQ, YM …
It is an intraday trading system that consists of trading different time frames and different input conditions.
Smart Bull is a simple, proven trend system based on strong fundamental logic.
Smart Bull is based on simplicity and the associated robustness of the system (idea first).
Backtest and Coupons on: quantraders.com
Backtesting data is hypothetical and it has not be en verified by C2.
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KarlA’s list above is excellent. I would also recommend not blindly trusting systems that completely missed the drop or managed to profit from it. That might seem counterintuitive, but systems that were out or positioned to profit might have just been lucky. Systems that took a hit but remained within their parameters might be safer bets. For example I’m subscribed to XLN Swingtrading, he was not only long into the crash he was holding some XIV and took nearly a full loss on it and yet his drawdown dropped to just 12.2% (just slightly more than his current annual return). Show me another system that was holding XIV and only went down 12.2%. From what I’ve seen I doubt he’ll blow up his subscribers, and expect that he’ll recover from this drawdown. My own system was fully long, took a hit, and stayed within estimated drawdown expectations (so far).
Anyway, just a thought.
Thank you to my investors that mentioned Payoff Matrix.
On 1/30/2018 at 9:34pm, I sent my investors a memo and charts for the next day. My investors are aware of how I qualify the market. When I sent the charts that night for trade date 1/31/2018, my investors were aware that the market at that point had flipped to a negative skew. They know how I qualify the market and what changed to give the market a negative skew. That negative skew remained intact for the next three days and my investors were made aware of that.
The night of the Super Bowl, I sent another memo to investors at 5:50pm before the futures opened that Sunday night. The negative skew remained. I sent a chart for Monday that night. They are aware by looking at the chart if the market has a negative skew. In the memo itself, here’s part of what I wrote that Sunday night for the next day Monday (the crash day). It’s not the entire memo but it’s part of the expectation: I wrote this about the ES.
“selling strength is a better choice” and “The market may go into trend mode. If it does don’t get in it’s way” and "negative bias ". Those are some of what was included in the memo Sunday Night for trade date Monday 2/05/2018.
Yesterday a little over 10 minutes before the close, I informed investors of $3 billion dollars that needed to be sold in equities. One of my investors thanked me for that as he got out of longs he had yesterday. I’m sure he’s very happy today.
Last week I informed investors that pension funds needed to reallocate and sell $12 billion in U.S. equities and buy $24 billion in fixed income.
I also informed investors of a note that funds would need to reallocate and sell $70 billion worth of equities if the S&P 500 closed below 2700.
I’m keeping an eye out on the bond auction and we had a market move down that was dollar driven the other day (after Monday) that was due to the results of the bond auction. Investors were made aware of what was causing it.
The day of the crash I sent investors a memo at 9:59am on Monday 2/05/2018. Here’s part of it:
“ES is controlled by day traders right now. volume high and the book very thin.” and mentioned it’s still weak. I also included “NEWS: White House monitoring market sell off. White House concerned about market fall but confident about economy. just crossed wires.”
That day the DOW opened down almost 300 points. It rallied all the way to even from down 300. This is the time everyone was buying the market. If I had not sent that note, my investors may have been buying also. But I informed them that the market was still weak. It rallied all the way to even and crashed.
All that above isn’t luck that I stayed out of the market on 2/05/2018.
I also posted this below in another post. Here’s the quote:
In addition to that quote, I’ll add that I don’t focus on my “wins”. I focus on the quality of my decisions. I’m not afraid to take a loss and that’s why I use stops and have such strict risk management. To me, I don’t want the loss to linger. I want to move away from it as fast as possible and move on to the next trade. I look at facts always and always stay objective. I’ve never once said “I think”. The market doesn’t care what I think. Once you stay objective, you’re head is clear and you ONLY look at facts.
Sorry to post all this in your thread. But it’s important. Trading isn’t only looking at a chart and trying to guess the next move. You need to bring a 360 approach to trading. I don’t have a fear of missing out so I haven’t taken trades the last few days. The book in ES was so thin it was trading like the DAX and that’s unusual.
I almost had a trade yesterday in ES and/or CL. For oil I needed to wait for the inventory report to come out. Traders were caught off guard because they were positioned long due to the API report the night before. I also sent Investors a memo that they halted production at the Forties Pipeline. When the EIA report came out it was complete opposite and traders immediately had to liquidate. That’s why I don’t trade the news and make sure news is out before I take the trade. For ES I couldn’t get the risk/reward to work on 3 contracts. Even 1 contract the risk was too high and I skipped the trade.
My risk is 1% to 2% on average with an absolute 5% max risk of my capital. In dollar terms that means I risk on average $500 to $1000. That risk is the risk on the entire position not per contract. A stop is attached to every single order with no excuses why. Some of these guys that crashed and lost $50,000 or whatever crazy amount is insane to me. And it wasn’t all XIV guys. So for a guy to be in equity futures and lose that much is insane. Here’s some of the excuses they used about a stop before the crash:
“I’m an expert market timer”
“There’s really a stop but it’s on a server ready to kick in”
“I hedge”
“I’ll give you the stop tomorrow”
There’s no monkey business with Payoff Matrix. Every single order has a stop and it’s attached with the pending order. I send out a memo to investors informing them we have a pending order and the risk in dollar amount. My stops are only moved to protect profits. That means only in our favor. Once the initial stop is set, it never moves the other way. Investors know the risk UPFRONT of every single trade.
For me, my biggest fear isn’t getting stopped out. My biggest fear is not following my trading plan. That’s why I’m so focused on the risk because my trading plan is based entirely around risk management.
Thank you and sorry for the long post.
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the lack of responses from users tell me there’s barely any systems left to trade. I hope c2 doesn’t turn into a myspace.
I think lack of responses is due the fact that nobody wants to be blamed later given certain recommendations today. 
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C2 isn’t going anywhere and won’t turn into a MySpace. C2 will be fine. The bad systems just needed to be flushed out. That’s a good thing for C2. Three investors above mentioned Payoff Matrix as a system they’re happy with. I’m sure there are other good systems. What we don’t need are those gamblers that martingale and hope luck is on their side. Those guys are gone. That’s good not bad for C2.
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@O5355p, I wish that were true but they WILL be back when they have rebuilt their track records under another id…lol.
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What would be more interesting to see in a volatility strategy?
- no positions held over night, but no protective puts
- holding overnight but buying puts against positions
Most of the returns for volatility systems occur overnight and on weekends. Buying protective puts and calls should be the better system.
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I cannot agree more, PayoffMatrix. Thank you for helping me with the other trades yesterday. Your market analytically skills and timely communications are highly valued, especially for the overseas subs like me who do not have first-hand access to the local US market news. Thumbs Up!
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Nice list… thank you.
Just 2 questions…
-
What do you consider a good avg. profit vs. avg. loss ratio ?
-
Is it correct that you are following
the strategy “A Strategy for YM” which has 32%DD?
(which is basically the same as strategy “3Fold” with 57%DD)
Wouldn’t you consider that as high drawdown in the past?
Or are you using your own stoploss?
Let me first answer your second point even though in general I do not like to disclose what systems I trade and I do not give recommendations.
When 3 Fold came to C2 a friend of mine alerted me to the fact that the developer had a long stellar track record of his signal service which now goes under the name Dagian.com. All you have to do is go to the site and look at the track record and I think you will agree that this is one of the best signal services you ever came across. When his second futures system came to C2 I asked him for the reason and he told me that A Strategy for YM has a better Sharp ratio and he himself trades it at 500% TOS whereas the first one at 300%, so I switched. The size and duration of the drawdown has to be measured against the enormous profit and to me seems very acceptable - just make sure you have enough capital or see if you can find a way to scale it accordingly. And the ratios you mention in your first point are also stellar.
Regarding your first point, these ratios are the first thing I look at when evaluating a system but there are exceptions and you have to look at all aspects of the system.
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I forgot to mention that I do occasionally put my own stops on, especially over the weekend.
