Sure, if your edge is P&D (illegal where I live) then of course having more subscribers is rarely a bad thing.
This is my simple advise when it comes to these services, do not pay for them or follow them. If you choose not to develop your own trading "system", either become an investor and buy indexes through dollar cost averaging or pay a professional to manage your money like a CTA or hedge fund if you qualify. I prefer CTAs and hedge funds because I no longer have the time to put into trading and I prefer non-correlated investments. Following someone else's signals will make you late on every trade, it is a little lazy and still requires your time and effort. I think some do this to have someone else to blame if they lose money but will be quick to take credit when it works. Bob
You didn't reply to a particular post, so I'll assume you are replying to me. You misunderstood my post. Regardless as to whether a strategy intends to pump and dump; the mere fact that many subscribers are all buying at the same time, or selling at the same time, may impact the markets towards that same direction. Simple concept. Nothing complicated. Nothing new.
I may be under-crediting the impact of being in before everyone else into the similar trade (similar to how HFT can run more simple strategies than those trading on longer time spans because chances are they can get in on a signal before anyone else). However, I maintain that if your signal is based on a genuine alpha (as opposed to "everyone pile in to make money"), that alpha may be eroded by mining it harder. Again the big disclaimer being I have never done this or measured it, it is mere extrapolation from what happens to alphas that become more popular.
I tend to agree, with the same disclaimer: The calculus would be the benefit of more subscribers vs the erosion of alpha caused by more subscribers.
I know of a company that got in first, plugged it to run it up with there followers, got out first and as it wasn't a scalper company left there clients in and quite frequently had them crushed. They charged $2000 per month for there service aswell!!
Just my opinion, OP, but I don't think any service you could come up with would kill your edge. There's just too much big money out there getting in multiple positions in one direction or another that it would be nonsense to game small timers. I'm not a big fan of Al Brooks's trading style, but I think he got it right when said (paraphrased) that the bigger money in the markets, who must win in the long-term, operate in the 40%-60% winning pct area. So what they can get is what the market will allow you to have with greater ease. This is predominantly why I stay away from 70%+ winning pct systems. Because the bigger money doesn't operate in that area, they will restrict your avg win to avg loss ratio to 1:1 (or worse) in the longer-term. That's way too much pressure to perform at that level with human mouse button clicks, getting $1 or less of reward for every $1 of risk. YES, it can be done, but it's probably better to have something like that fully automated to not wear you down mentally / emotionally.
I don't think that any followers of a signal service can change the outcome in highly liquid markets. In illiquid markets like Penny Stocks, it is possible and I am sure many signal provider just front run their crowds, but if you trade Forex, commodities or even large-cap stocks it is virtually impossible unless you have followers who play with tens of billions of dollars on regular basis. Also reverse engineering a system is not very likely if you don't share your logic publicly in full details. In general, if you are not developing your own system with known parameters and many back-tests and scenarios played it is not worth following somebody else. You can never be sure how robust the system is.
I did one stupid thing before; Years ago, I subscribed to signal service provider from trading coach before. This stupid coach (or rather smart coach because he earned $$$ from selling the service) gave all the junk lousy signals. Providing signal service will NOT kill your edge !!! Because it it is that good, no one will provide the signal at whatever price.