unhappy with Collective2

T

TradeBlazer

For those who don't know Collective2 is a platform where anyone can open an account and start trading paper money. If their trading is any good, then investors will have a real opportunity to follow them and even have their brokers mimic their trades. You can view their Leaderboard to see which traders are doing well.

I joined about 6-8 months ago and my cumulative return is 242.2%, yet they won't let me show up on their Leaderboard so that investors could consider subscribing to my strategy. I would receive the lion's share of the subscription fees.

Their reasoning:
"Inclusion on the Leaderboard is determined by your C2 Score, which is our proprietary method for ranking strategies based on various risk and return factors. Your score currently ranks #236 which is not high enough for the Leaderboard right now."

I have no idea what goes into their algorithm for ranking strategies but it seems to be a crock of schitt. Obviously it's not heavily skewed toward performance or else I'd be in the top 5 for options trading. And they will not reveal what I need to do in order to improve my C2 score so that my strategy can be found in the Leaderboard.

I am about ready to turn and run. This is my strategy: https://collective2.com/details/146093439
 
I used to list my system on Collective2 but stopped, not due to bad performance but due to lack of subscriber interest.

There's a dynamic there where developers charge pretty steep monthly fees, like around $150 and to overcome it they trade very aggressively to achieve reasonable net of fees performance (which is how C2 calculates returns). Then invariably, this over aggressive trading goes wrong and ends in a big drawdown.

Look into savvytrader.com. They charge your model subscribers a flat $25 and your cut can be 55% to 85% versus Collective2's 50% take.

And savvytrader.com does not charge you, the model developer, any fees. As far as I can see you can list as many as you want for no fee, whereas at Collective2, you have to pay $99 per month for up to 3 strategies.

Granted, the savvytrader.com payout per subscriber is going to be a bit low (x% of $25 per month per subscriber) but I think it's a price point that attracts a lot more eyes and a much more stable and larger subscriber universe.

I have seen savvytrader model managers display their track records on social media such as substack to lead new subscribers to sign up.
 
You can either advertise there for money (in email, I think) or just post about your system on their message board for free. Your system should show up in searches specially if someone is looking for just option trades.

Here is a feedback on your strategy, why I wouldn't consider subscribing to it, despite its great performance.

1. Too many trades for my taste.
2. It went sideways between mid-Dec to mid-Feb, when the market was sideways (so same as market) or up (so not even following the market.
3. In Oct it went down when the market was down.
4. It was also kinda sideways for the first 2 months, well drop and recovery. (that is actually worse than sideways)
5. Out of 5 months of existence, it has been sideways for 4 months and only 3 quick surges are responsible for most gains.

In short, the market correlation is to great so I don't trust your system it wouldn't take a huge dip when the next market downturn occurs. And just following the market one doesn't need to be a subscriber, a weekly SPX call will do.
 
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Pekelo said:
You can either advertise there for money (in email, I think) or just post about your system on their message board for free. Your system should show up in searches specially if someone is looking for just option trades.

Here is a feedback on your strategy, why I wouldn't consider subscribing to it, despite its great performance.

1. Too many trades for my taste.
2. It went sideways between mid-Dec to mid-Feb, when the market was sideways (so same as market) or up (so not even following the market.
3. In Oct it went down when the market was down.
4. It was also kinda sideways for the first 2 months, well drop and recovery. (that is actually worse than sideways)
5. Out of 5 months of existence, it has been sideways for 4 months and only 3 quick surges are responsible for most gains.

In short, the market correlation is to great so I don't trust your system it wouldn't take a huge dip when the next market downturn occurs. And just following the market one doesn't need to be a subscriber, a weekly SPX call will do.
More...
Thanks.

1. I can pare down the number of trades if most people don't like that much exposure.
2. It still increased about 20% or so during this time.
3. Oct/Nov I was still getting things figured out with my trading strategy so things were in flux back then.
4. ^^^same
5. No, not sideways for four months. Oct through Nov were the only lackluster months. The profile has been upward ever since then.
upload_2024-3-9_15-43-55.png


I know the real test will come when the markets makes a big turn. So we will see how things go.
 
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Is this one of those, pretend I hate the platform but I'm actually advertising my strategy?
 
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TradeBlazer said:
For those who don't know Collective2 is a platform where anyone can open an account and start trading paper money. If their trading is any good, then investors will have a real opportunity to follow them and even have their brokers mimic their trades. You can view their Leaderboard to see which traders are doing well.

I joined about 6-8 months ago and my cumulative return is 242.2%, yet they won't let me show up on their Leaderboard so that investors could consider subscribing to my strategy. I would receive the lion's share of the subscription fees.

Their reasoning:
"Inclusion on the Leaderboard is determined by your C2 Score, which is our proprietary method for ranking strategies based on various risk and return factors. Your score currently ranks #236 which is not high enough for the Leaderboard right now."

I have no idea what goes into their algorithm for ranking strategies but it seems to be a crock of schitt. Obviously it's not heavily skewed toward performance or else I'd be in the top 5 for options trading. And they will not reveal what I need to do in order to improve my C2 score so that my strategy can be found in the Leaderboard.

I am about ready to turn and run. This is my strategy: https://collective2.com/details/146093439
More...

Drawdown of 43% is high. At the absolute maximum you'd trade yours at half the leverage to get nearer to 20%, most would only tolerate around 15%, so your return would reflect that. I don't hate your strategy though.
C2 is likely factoring in the age of your strategy. Everyone has seen those 100-500% APR ones that blow up quickly within a year. There's a reason why strategies that are around for many years have lower returns.

Haven't visited C2 in a while but you do have a point in that many of the strategies on the leaderboard have horrendous metrics.
 
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TradeBlazer said:
2. It still increased about 20% or so during this time.
More...

No, the mid-Dec high was 92K and the mid-Feb low 98K, so like 8% in 2 months, what is pretty much sideways with such a high market volatility.

The problem is though that if someone had just bought for 10% of capital a weekly SPX call, they would have performed the same or most likely better, with 1 trade a week and no subscription prices.

Also you started a system without fully testing it? Probably restarting it in November would have been a better idea, the 42% DD wouldn't show up.
 
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