Well it’s disappointing news to be sure, but I take Matthew at his word that the price change is due to C2 losing money and not just due to greed. (I won’t throw in any Gordon Gekko quotes about greed.)
The thing frustrates me is that I believe C2 is losing money, not because of the February “crash”, but because they have a business model that rewards scammers and trade leaders who take excessive risk. This may bring in subscribers for the short-term, but it’s now clear what that did for the long-term good of the company. I think providing a (relatively) lower cost for TOS trade leaders is one good step, but there are other fairly simple steps that can be taken to shore up the quality of the strategies and make it more clear to subscribers what the good strategies are and what the scam strategies are, and make it much more clear what the real risks to any strategies are.
I would happily pay the extra 10% if C2 would change the business model and culture so that it’s a marketplace for serious buyers and sellers. I posted the following suggestions in a previous post, and got a lot of “likes”, but no action or even acknowledgement from C2. I’ll post them again:
The way I see it, there are really 3 main issues that keep coming up over and over again, and that have fairly easy solutions, but that C2 hasn’t addressed for whatever reason.
#1 – Gaming the bid/ask spread – simple solution – if the strategy has no subscribers, wait for the price to trade THROUGH the spread before logging the trade.
#2 – There is no easy way to see how much risk was actually taken to achieve the posted returns – fairly simple solution – do a “Stress Test” like Interactive Brokers does, calculating what a simulated one day 10/20/30% drop in the stock market would do to the strategy, display the current score and the historical score. It’s giving subscribers a hugely important tool to help them make informed decisions.
#3 – People crashing and coming back with a new identity and “clean slate” – moderate solution – verify system owners’ identities like cryptocurrency exchanges do, and if people return, make them carry on their old accounts.
I understand from a business perspective why C2 doesn’t do #3….but #1 and #2 would add so much more credibility to C2 and the strategies it hosts – I don’t understand why something like that hasn’t been done.
Well, at least that’s the way I see it. 
I hope this is a wake-up call for Matthew and that he does make some real changes to make sure C2 is around for another 17 years.
David
