So I have been discussing a bit with Striker & another brokerage firm ... Striker's business model: - system developer must trade his/her system at their firm, so that they can track historical performance ; $ / round-turn slightly higher to cover the cost of performance tracking (was told $6 /RT) - broker execute trades for all subscribers in a "block account", and fill-price attributed to every customer is identical (avg fill price) - broker charges $20/RT (intraday systems) to the customer (+ exchange & regulatory fees) - customer pays an extra fee to system developer ($50 to $100 per month & per size unit) A cursory look at their systems performance shows a very small number are good performers after these charges (at least, Striker shows performance after commissions & system fees). There was no information available re. the actual level of subscription to this business model in general, nor to the mean time to 1st customer / 10th customer. I don't mind having to trade my system at their firm to get the historical performance tracked, however since I have limited capital I can't do that with more than a couple firms ... further investigation is required!
Thanks for sharing!! What is the meaning of "per size unit"? Does it mean that depending on the number of contracts a customer trades in his account for your system, you as a developer will get compensated? Because at Collective2 and Tradestation Strategynetwork, a trader can trade 'n' number of contracts - but developer's compensation is not a function of the number of contracts that a customer trades. Can you please clarify this point. Should be so - $20 roundturn trip is big fees. I think this is very critical piece of information that is missing. For example, collective2 tells you that 26% of profitable systems tend to get their first client within 1 month of trading. When you say system develop must trade his account at their firm, does it mean that you show them your code? Or, you load your code on their servers. Atleast for TradeStation case, you have to load your code on their server in an open form, although they say they handle the code automatically without manual intervention.
- per "unit size" : yes, if the reference system is trading 1 contract, and a customer wish to trade 4 contracts on it, he/she will pay 4*monthly fee - for performance tracking purpose, it is fine to trade your system, just direct the trades to that account. - when you get subscribers, it is Striker which operates the system on their server - they need an executable version of the strategy, able to trade the number of contracts corresponding to the number of unit subscribed on your system. On a separate note, I just received a response from Attain Capital, they currently only work with Tradestation-based systems.
Do you think there is a way to estimate mean time to 1st customer / 10th customer. This is very important information. One thing that I liked about Striker is the per unit size thing. This is not possible in collective2 and tradestation strategy network. However, if you look around collective2, and observe the real brokerage trades, most people trade 1 or 2 contracts per signal. So, if you are a signal provider for CL, you can have upto 10-20 subscribers and not worry that someone is going to trade size and take all the liquidity and you get compensated only for peanuts. Not sure what kind of clientele striker and attain attract. From their website, they seem more sophisticated than C2. So, their clients could be trading larger account sizes (important word is "could be" - I am just guessing). At least, per unit size is fair to the developer. All the best.
Tried several signal providers, none work reliably with short-term strategies. Small delays can be crucial. IMO if you want to deal with clients it's better to just run OPM. Way more potential as a business and much easier technically to avoid issues. Also better reputation and better reward for you if you are really profitable (someone with $500K account making $50K a month on your calls won't pay you just $100 subscription fee ).