Fundseeder. Opinions? Useful/Not. Risk?

kcgoogler

kcgoogler

Hello All,

Recently ran across this site on another et thread apparently backed by some big names (Jack Schwager for one): http://fundseeder.com/

Idea is a good one; but reading the faq on the site i am not able to decide on a couple of things. Throwing it out to see what folks think.

1. Say you have a pretty good return; is it really any good linking your accounts? Is anyone yet able to capitalize on it? Anyone with direct experiences (good/bad)?

2. About the risk of having them added onto IB as an Administrator role; do they get to look at all the trades? Thats what it looks like based on the FAQ; if so is it really secure; or does it just enable a door for someone to reverse engineer your trading? Given the big names involved, i suspect it is safe. But what do you think?


Regards!
-gariki
 
I looked into Fundseeder a while ago and decided against it. Any strategy with outlying sharpe ratios will catch their attention and there would be nothing preventing them from trying to reverse engineer your IP. Lots of potential downside, no clear upside.
 
If I was to go down this route (which I'm not) then I'd probably go with fundseeder. Although I have no experience of them, the fact that Jack is involved is a big plus. Remember you are giving these guys access to your brokerage account - you need to trust them! Many of the similar operations are somewhat shady and/or not able to attract meaningful capital; this would not be the case here. Jack has a very substantial reputation to protect and this would give me some comfort.

As far as I know yes they would see your trades. It's much easier to determine if someone has alpha, or is just lucky, if they can see your trades as well as your p&l.

The risk of someone 'reverse engineering' your trading are somewhat overblown in my opinion. They'll want to know roughly what you're doing in any case if they were to give you capital. If you're doing something very vanilla then yes, someone could write a systematic strategy that would closely replicate what you're doing, but that is true of any vanilla. They might still invest in you of course; if the replication can't quite match your performance, or they are impressed by your risk control, or if they have an investor that just wants to buy vanilla to fill a particular box on their asset allocation chart (they do exist).

If you're doing something exceptional and unique then the chances of someone reverse engineering are zero. Let's suppose you find a particular pattern on a chart that nobody has seen before (warning: this is a ridiculous example and wholly unrealistic). Nobody doing any standard back tests has been unable to uncover this pattern. Then FS look at your trades, and try to match it against some standard patterns that people normally trade against. They don't find a match.

(Note that in this case you might actually find it harder to attract a serious investor; since you can't explain what you're doing without giving too much away... and FS wouldn't understand your 'style', which would make it harder to sell you)

They're unlikely to be able to work out what you're doing without comparing all the price charts for every one of your trades and doing some non linear analysis to try and find the common pattern. It would be a lot of work, and of questionable value. The reason it is of questionable value is that they could do the same matching process in a backtest without needing your trading record. If this didn't turn up any statistical evidence of your pattern in a large backtest, then doing the same analysis on your much smaller sample of trading records has no hope at all.

GAT

kcgoogler said:
Hello All,

Recently ran across this site on another et thread apparently backed by some big names (Jack Schwager for one): http://fundseeder.com/

Idea is a good one; but reading the faq on the site i am not able to decide on a couple of things. Throwing it out to see what folks think.

1. Say you have a pretty good return; is it really any good linking your accounts? Is anyone yet able to capitalize on it? Anyone with direct experiences (good/bad)?

2. About the risk of having them added onto IB as an Administrator role; do they get to look at all the trades? Thats what it looks like based on the FAQ; if so is it really secure; or does it just enable a door for someone to reverse engineer your trading? Given the big names involved, i suspect it is safe. But what do you think?


Regards!
-gariki
More...
 
They are legit. I have been previously using the old website RapaCapIntro.com

There is also BattleFin Stadium. I know people got help starting CTA or got funding through them. http://www.battlefin.com . They are located in Miami, Florida and are a part of the thriving HF/FO/CTA/Trader community in FL.

I'm not interested in starting my own CTA business, but a being hired by a business as trader employee or on consultant basis (manage one or more books for the firm).
 
There's several things like this floating around but they are all based on the same concept. If you actually do prove to them you have a successful system, it won't be long before your system becomes their system. That's the whole point of them doing it. Same as things like World Quant. They are throwing out a big open net waiting to monetize other peoples success.

It's really one of two things:

1) You aren't a very good trader. Then don't bother, because nothing they provide there will help you take it to the next level anyway.

2) You are a great trader. Then don't freely give your ideas to someone else. Find a way to monetize it yourself while keeping your trading proprietary.


Don't share your trading methods with anybody, ever ! Unless it's shit, then by all means share with the world. Become one of those "if you can't do teach" online guru's.

But if you can do, then do it yourself

0.02$
 
Man, what terrible advice above. Anyone who makes it in a big way in this business trades OPM. Trading OPM today requires transparency on both sides. Trying to be a secret lone wolf trader is a recipe for disaster not to mention churning your life away.

Fundseeded helps real traders get to the next level. Unless you have another way to access OPM --- legit firms like fundseeder are most traders only choice to break out into the bigtime
 
I didn't say you shouldn't trade OPM, I've been doing it for almost 20 years my friend. Of f'ing course you should do it if you have skills and a track record that makes it possible. It's a great income, and an income made by doing what we would be doing anyway on our own. Best of both worlds.

What I did say is, those services are NOT the way to achieve it. If he's a good trader, he doesn't need a service like that to raise money. He can start a fund and raise money on his own. Those services are for the dime a dozen type who think that one or two good years of trading means they can now manage big money. The vast majority of them fall flat on their face.

If you're so good, start your own fund, find your own investors, and make a long term career out of it the old fashion way. With market beating results and hard work.
 
I remember a couple of years back when I first heard of this project, Jack Schwager was talking about it in a video on YouTube. Back then the team was made of the same guys from the failed Rapacap. Just thought to myself, why would Schwager associate himself with these dubious guys (just look up the ET thread of Rapacap to see what I mean).

Now it seems there's a whole new team onboard, but still looks like an opaque project. What exactly are they ? How are they going to make their money ? Who are these mysterious investors that just regulated managers have access to ? Is it a list of 2 guys ? 200 ? 2000 ?
 
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