From what I understand C2 has some fixed costs that cannot be decreased at all (regulatory fees, broker data fees, infrastructure hosting costs etc) and they have some fixed costs that can be partially cut (like salaries for employees, programmers working on an ad-hoc basis), you cannot lay off everyone as there would not be anyone left to provide support.
So you have a business with large fixed costs percentage of all costs, not much room to maneuve but to try to increase the revenue because of the loss of customer base.
I don’t think they are greedy, it seems they are in a tight spot.
As far as I am concerned I am not over the moon about the change but also somewhat understanding of the current situation.
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Just for the record: I don’t know about “people”, but this people didn’t forget that. They raised the fees and scaled back functionality not only the occasion you mention but 3 or 4 times since I am here. (I am a sub, not a trade leader.)
When I joined, I could autotrade in my own account (that has PM) for $99 as many strategies as I wanted as big scale that I wanted.
I don’t remember the exact sequence but by now if I want to trade >5 strategies, I pay $299 (this is for a month, not for a year), I can’t scale higher than 1,000% and I can’t use my own account only an account dedicated to C2.
Incidentally: partly because I am as upset as you are about their totally unjustifiable prices and partly because of the inconvenience of not being able to autotrade in my main account, I tried setting up myself without autotrading. After all, whenever I subscribe to a strategy I get a nice popup informing me that autotrading is optional, I can follow a strategy because I get all the signals over e-mail.
Minor problem: they send out the signal whenever they feel like it. With a 10-20-30-60 minute delay. I spent around 2 months with customer support, who kept sending me canned responses and finally I go through to Matthew Himself! I explained in great technical details how an instantaneous e-mail could be sent out trivially* using their existing technology (thus enabling clients to circumvent autotrade). His reply was twofold:
(1) yes, this can be done trivially;
(2) they will not do it.
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I do not find it crazy.
50/50 and they give me a marketplace with a tone of great traffic, good community to show my strategy plus autotrading which client trust.
I wish I could find more partners that I pay 50% when they bring new clients and they take care of all the rest.
Plus the stats on the account for free, there are pages that charge just to tell your account stats.
** Because of this I have an offer:**
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New clients or returning legacy clients* can trade R Option at 25% discount for the fist month.
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Existing clients that bring a referral can obtain 25% off until Nov 1st 2018.
*Disclamer
Legacy clients meaning any user what have been a subscriber of R Option from 2013 to 2017.
By the way, I am adding exposure to the market!!
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@Mar20, good for you!
I just meant that costs going up everywhere we look makes life just that much more difficult to survive.
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I am not increasing my pricing, My pricing does not consider C2 share. It takes into account other factors.
Actually I just reduce it until Nov 1st, 2018 for new clients
25% off for new subscribers. to now more write me on the private chat and give you the coupon
R Option
I am not so sure about this.
The little I know (through experience, through hunches and through e-mails) about their setup, including servers, code base and the technology stack they use that cost (the R&D cost and the DevOps cost) could be reduced dramatically
AFAICT they are not working on this, and they are in constant fire-fighting mode. This business (and development) model is not sustainable.
This (if I am right) is a lose-lose situation. They may not be greedy at all. They may be fighting for (financial) survival. They look at us and say “this a-holes don’t understand that our profit margin in 0.01% as is. What the f**k they want?” And we look at them and say “greedy bastards, they have a profit margin on 30% as is and now they want to increase it to 40%.”
Bottom line:
IMHO they
(1) do need the money because their technology is dated, not scalable and not maintainable. Operating expenses are spiraling out of control. Not good. Or:
(2) are greedy because the technology is excellent, it scales well, low cost maintenance, so their fixed cost is very low. They are just greedy. Not good.
I am not sure if it is against the rule if the trade leader offered lower private payment from subscriber, say by paypal, zelle, or even wire transfer, but in the C2 system, always give the subscriber discount to $0?
Unmentioned in the discussion so far is the impact on subs. I have already had one notification from a developer who is increasing his subscription fee in reaction to his C2 fee increase.
I would expect developers will pass as much of this along to subs as possible as ultimately the customer pays for all costs incurred by a business, including profit.
At some point I’ll need to begin to examine if it is worth it to stay on as sub, as well.
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Ditto on both points
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Agreed. I am getting out too. I thought C2 was a good platform for developers of prudent strategies (all 3 of my strats - all successful - are built on max 2x leverage and no more. Period.). I honestly feel 40%/50% cut is not worth the effort - I will trade it myself now, along with a small group of serious non-C2 investors with whom I have build strong relationships with. C2 just isn’t worth it. And that is worrying - if many other decent strategy developers are thinking the same way, then it is not the February crash that is the main issue, it is a totally unworkable business model. And these guys are planning to float shares and go public? Good luck with that.
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It is not true. The developer can go into negative. 7.5% they charge if the customer refused to subscribe. It is not right. Why should a developer pay for a bad client who profits. I have experience. And is it a client? TOS should be entered for customers.
Why do mono other forums have a similar interface? I saw 5 pieces, but I can not write about them. Are they affiliated persons or partners?
Actually in some sense, it is.
If they would implement a subscription model, similar to real hedge funds (they keep saying that they are a “distributed hedge fund”, whatever it means), it would increase the value of the service thousand-fold. [I don’t know of course what would happen to **them** (financially), see my earlier post about my doubts about the robustness of their technology.]
Imagine a model where they charge both trade leaders and subs a fixed base-fee.
The rest is performance based. So I (as a sub) pay 10-30% of new profit for the system. And you (as trade leader) get 70% of that. (After C2’s 30% cut.)
@jozsika, I agree and have stated that in the past. Once a developer has proven that he or she is consistent and profitable there should be profit sharing.
I agree with @O5355p, the recent changes are a complete dealbreaker.
Honestly, @MatthewKlein I think you just killed C2. Before the fee increase It was the most expensive social trading plattform already. For both, traders and investors. It has the USP of the many different instruments you can trade so it was ok to pay more than elsewhere. Especially the “premium” character of C2 is great. It always appeared to be a place where a trader can get a decent price for his service.
Come on C2, do a reality check:
February crash is 6 months away. You just recently noticed it affects your bottom line and all of the sudden increase fees without proper warning? Can´t be serious.
Your competitors have none to very little fixed fees for developers + they usually take only 20% of revenue. You think you provide more than double the value for developers to justify your pricing? No. You don´t even have a large investor community anymore because you don´t take any measure to make investing on your plattform sustainable (i.e. investment education. You leave it up to the forum guys instead). Your data feed is crap. Even free data is more accurate than what you provide for traders that use your webtrading. You pay 250k for it, really? Find another solution instead of charging your customers to death. It´s the second or third significant price increase since I started here in late 2016. I tell you, this is the WRONG strategy to get your business back on track.
Your business focus at the moment is to get the most money out of the current state.
If you don´t focus on sustainability and quality service you will be out of business soon.
I propose the following goals if you want to stay in business:
- Find MORE customers - both, traders and investors. Marketing needs improvement (you do advertising but what about a serious affiliate program so that content marketers and experienced online marketers take the stage? That´s how your competition gets loads of traffic btw…)
- KEEP customers - educate investors about portfolio building strategies. You have a mailing list. Use it. At least the basics must be understood so your platform doesn´t get a problem like in February again.
- IMPROVE the quality of your service.
- Set INCENTIVES for TOS instead of punishing it less. (For example, waive trade leader listing fees for TOS strategies completely and take a reasonable cut like 20-30% of subscriptions earned. This way you get a hell lot more strategies that have some confidence behind it. Also make the TOS decision a one time decision at the very start of a strategy. It makes zero sense to allow a trader to build a fantastic fake/luck track record with demo money and then let him recieve TOS certification afterwards. That is misleading investors!)
I´ll be around a few months, maybe until end of the year to check if things turn the right way. Meanwhile I´ll look for alternatives because I see you out of business within 12 months if you continue this way.
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I do believe that USA regulations prevents performance based fees without requiring leaders to register with the SEC. I think that is a big reason why they have avoided that model.
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If you are in business for 17 years and experienced all the ups and downs then you should have created a reserve for a bad period of time. And do not ask for money from other people with a slough period of 6 months.
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I think about the same… I prefer C2 TO BE STRONG FINANCIALLY and with Great Employees that can compete with other platforms to attack High Profile Investors/Followers even if the have to squeeze my expertise.
It took me more than 15 years to take R Option to its current level, and without C2 I am not sure if others could know my work and I could not form this type of partnership with the clients trying to benefit together.
https://collective2.com/details/102125034
Trading the markets is extremely hard. It can take the best of you…to be fit for it can take years and never be fully realldy. Mentally, Emotionally and Physically.
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I believe the same, You cannot charge a % without registration
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@Snow2020, you maybe correct on that. Also the fact that C2 will have to carry the liabilities for bad traders that lose all their clients funds.
It can be a headache. With the current model there is no liability for C2.
