Patience is a very necessary virtue. I would not be throwing my money at anyone until the equity curve, their statistics, their longevity, and their reputation all seemed in order.
Also, I saw your review of "Turn $1200 To $25000 In A Year!!!" The vendor has a weak profit factor (1.3) and APD (0.16), And it has only traded a few days (53 trades or not). I would honestly give that system another 4 weeks, or you may be in for a sudden shock.
With the futures system, another problem crept up, I am basically an arbitrage trader, like QT Quickfire’s system ($1500 per month but not tradable on C2 because of slippage). The latency killed my entries and exits. I can do this all day long on my IB account, but going for 10 YM points on a 8 second trade doesn’t work with C2!
So, do you have a bloomberg terminal? Do you subscribe to the NASDAQ weights of the indexes? How about subscribing to the S&P 500 weights?
If you do, can you tell me how much they cost?
So you’re going for 50 dollars per contract on ym? I don’t think that’s going to work very long term. It’s not c2, it’s your platform. Ninja trader, TS, are what’s needed to properly do this.
Manually of course that’s never going to work.
Of course someone who has blown every account and is rated 70 and below should be given more credence. It’s just natural I guess.
Beau,
I use the NYSE-Tick on Interactive Brokers to find emotional highs or lows, along with solid support and resistance levels. After 12 months of painful experience, I now typically make about 15 out of 20 good trades a day, but many are less than $50. (And many are essentially break even trades.) Because of my success, I started “Scalper’s Paradise” which I renamed to “AAT-Futures” on C2 trading YM and NQ. Even using IBtoC2, I found that by the time the trades were executed the market had often moved significantly from where my own trade hit on my account. I corresponded with C2’s owner and he confirmed the latency. Granted some times this was in the subs favor, but was TOO stressful trying the fast scalps with this environment and (often) market orders on YM and NQ at emotional highs or lows in the market.
Until I consider more of a swing-type style, I don’t think I will be trying to run another futures system on C2. Again, the stress of being responsible for someone else’s money impaired my trading calls.
I haven’t considered using the weights of the indexes. Sounds interesting! I will look into it.
Steve
What I always say to people who claim that C2 latency is responsible for their bad fills on their C2 results page: Show me your real brokerage statement where you received your much-better fills, and then we can talk.
Is there some additional latency when pumping trades through C2? Yes. Is it significant for those systems that are real-life-tradable (as opposed to those systems which exist only in people’s imaginations – i.e. those hypothetical systems that people “discover” when optimizing over back-tested history, but never actually trade in real life) – then no.
I mean Steve no disrespect. I am sure that Steve (and other system vendors) really do sincerely believe in their hearts that C2 adds latency, and that this latency is why their previously fantastic systems are not functioning correctly any longer. But I counter this by saying that the main thing that C2 introduces isn’t latency – it’s reality – the reality of bid/ask spreads and just-touched limit prices.
So, if there’s a vendor that believes his system stats have been severely degraded on C2, compared to his own real brokerage account, I am ready to be convinced. I ask only to see those real brokerage statements showing your much better results.
I would agree with Matthew. I’m not sure how is him, but I’m really tired from complains on how C2 shows fills. From my experience C2 shows optimistic scenario of fills. at least for stocks. Op-ti-mi-sti-c. If you cannot do money on paper with the kind of happy scenario, well… Reality is more harsh than C2.
And of course latency, bad trades, mood of a vendor… Shit. It’s why I offering to add to C2 systems that are based on broker statement. In the case you won’t be able to blame anybody except you and you will loose/make money publicly 
Eu
"Of course someone who has blown every account. . . "
Of course, your statement may be just a bit blown out of proportion (imho).gA
[LINKSYSTEM_31138456]
That would be nice, Wladimir – a daily system or account stoploss on C2. I have actually programmed this into my system so that IT will stop trading if it hits a daily stoploss (or a daily gain target).
Bryan
I feel your pain, Steve. My system counts on quick scalps most of the time too. When C2 doesn’t get my trading signals for 2-3 seconds sometimes, that can make a large difference in the trade! I’m wondering now if it’s just better off that I trade it for just myself in my own IB account rather than try to hook up subscribers here.
I must say that the system is working pretty well lately even on C2, but I am skeptical because of stories like yours and my own observations. I think I will continue to post my trades to C2 as a historical record like you said, it really makes you be honest and follow your trading rules. But I don’t know if I will open mine up to subscribers or not, yet.
Bryan
Amen, brother. Play smart or don’t play (and save your money).
To sclapers I say: Try going up a level. Markets are usually fractal in nature. What works on 1 minute bars probably works on 3 or 5 minute bars also (try it).
You will then also reduce the slippage and commission, which are the bane of scalpers.
I’m going to stick to answering the original question posed by this thread (per its title).
Observing and following (via subscription) several trading systems over the past few years has provided me the best real-life diverse education possible in what works and what doesn’t in trading, plain and simple. I have found flaws in each system I’ve studied (via subscription). Note that some of these “flaws” are simply a matter of personal preference, such as unacceptable risk-management rules, entering a trade contra to the current short-term trend (let’s call this one contra slippage), counter-productive averaging or rotational strategy during the opening or closing of positions, and other personal picadillos.
These systems, which all had some “good” points to them or they would not have caught my interest to begin with, served as a baseline models in devising my own trading strategy. What started off as a simple “buy signal filtering system” has turned into a complete trade management system, complete with multiple entry/exit strategies and prioritization mechanism.
My goal is to enter the system into the World Cup Trading Championship and C2 starting January 2009 (not to be confused with the manual option spread strategy I charted on here for a while and still use today).
In summary, several C2 systems have provided an education in what to do and what not to do, over the years. I suspect I will continue to learn from other peoples’ systems going forward, though the lessons will be smaller and fewer between.
Hi Index. I would say decreasing chart granularity would yes, reduce commissions because there would be less trades per hour/day. But how would it reduce slippage? My system would place an order and then close at a profit target of say, 10 ticks - independent of the chart format, whether it’s on a 1 min or a 60 min chart. How does that reduce slippage, or the time delay between my trading software and the C2 servers?
That’s great, Lew. I hope I can learn from others’ systems too. Is your system completely automated, or do you still find a need to step in occasionally and manually trade positions?
Thanks!
Bryan
If you trade less your overall cost of slippage will be lower, you’re right the slippage per trade won’t be any different, there will just be less of them, that can still be a huge saving though.
Bryan
When I said to move up to longer bars (3, 5 minute whatever), that means, you will be using larger profit objectives, holding longer and using larger stops. Prices are generally fractal in nature. The movements at 1 minute are not much different from 5 minute bars. People THINK they are different, but so much not really. They still have a chaotic wave (I did NOT say Elliott!!!) form…
If you are trying to limit the dollar exposure, just reduce your number of contracts traded…
Further, it will also lift you above some of the general random noise of the market triggering your stops.
So if you were trying to get 3 ticks before, now, you may now be looking for 7-10 (whatever your per-trade goal is). Just practice this a little, and you should get the idea.
My point was that your commission and slippage will be reduced as a PERCENTAGE of your total profits as WELL as lower due to less frequent trading.
The system is completely automated. Other than turning it off, there is no way to "step in." More than a decade agao, I lost the desire to sit in front of a computer and look at charts, or even have the market "follow me" around (I used to be a "Pocket Quote Pro" subscriber ages ago - google for it).
I’m with you. Lew. My worst trading was when I was watching every tick and fretting over the profit/loss. I just could not follow my rules without getting away from the computer screen, or shutting it off. My emotions messed it all up.
One thing I wonder about C2 (back to the topic at hand)… is, if system developers here have such a great system, why bother putting it on C2? Why not just trade it yourself to make your money?
For me, I’m here to learn and to be held publicly accountable for my trading. I don’t know if I will ever open my system up to subscribers. I suppose I would only if people ask me directly. Otherwise, I just need to get some risk capital together and trade it in my own account. Then again… C2 subscriptions could provide that risk capital I don’t have yet. Decisions, decisions…
Bryan
