I haven't. But I remember a prominent Market Wizard who said he and his fund were buying a lot of commercial systems and while most weren't of value, they once in a while found something worthwhile which they could use in their own systems. Probably a small cost for a fund. Don't remember exactly who it was, but it was obviously one of the system traders in one of those books.
Nowadays, you get most of those information free on the internet and You Tube videos. All you need is to buy a couple of good books like Stan Weinstein's book. Learn risk management and proper position sizing. You will see how valuable, controlling your risk is on every trade.
Well, everyone buying books about trading strategies is in a way buying those strategies. People also pay for online courses and videos to learn trading strategies. There are also many trading scripts sold for MetaTrader, Ninja Trader, etc. And some traders or funds may be buying, accumulating, seeking and testing strategies when they have budget to spend, but there may not be many of them. Though selling just a description of strategies seems to be a very small market, as any useful strategy would rather be implemented live at Collective2 and sold to subscribers there.
Obviously a lot og people are buying them. Otherways the scammers would have been out of business. There will always be a market since new lazybutts are entering the market each day. They want to get rich quick without doing the work, and believe that there are someone out there that are actually going to sell them «the holy grail». A sucker is born every minute. Hopefully most learn after being scammed a few times..... And if you wonder, that nigerian prince does probably also have a failproof trading system he can sell you. Just ask next time he get’s in touch
Just on the principle of Hanlon's Razor, describing new traders as "lazybutts" is most likely to be false as well as unnecessarily unkind. Many of them have been lured into trading by all sorts of wild promises in the first place... it's not like they know any better. Ignorant to the point of not even knowing what questions to ask in order to learn, I'll grant you - but I suspect that most of us started out that way. And for those of us who became successful, chance are very high that somewhere along the way, some more experienced, wiser traders clued us in... possibly with an eye-roll or ten at our ignorance, and maybe with some gruffness and exasperation, but they gave us the straight story instead of just sneering. I came pretty close to buying into a (very expensive) trading school right at the very start, but hit the "abort" button just a few days into it - my natural cynicism started ringing all sorts of alarm bells. Did my own research - now that I knew what general direction to look in - put in a tremendous amount of time, effort, and skull sweat, and have managed to sustain significant positive returns from day one. In fact, I just recently passed a benchmark that I had set, and bought myself a very nice trading server to celebrate. But overall, I don't believe that there's any utility for a new trader in buying into any guru's promises; not only is there a tremendous number of scammers out there, but they also have no means of judging a good system vs. a bad one (no way to determine how good their learning ability, mental capacity, emotional control, execution, etc. are), and - I would guess - there's a very, very low chance of them running into someone who actually does have something useful to teach them. Especially for the tiny amounts they're likely to be willing to risk. Seems like a losing game from every perspective.
The secret to success is buying Chinese made pickaxes and shovels which break in the first 2 days so you can sell them again and again under different labels.
The Chinese have it down to a science. The amount of times you've bought and had to replace that fake Rolex or fake Louis Vuitton bag, you could have just bought the real thing and actually saved money.
I give up trying to predict the market especially with system. Just read the charts diligently and let the chart patterns sink into your memory. This process is going to take times and being patient is the key to success.
Buy the talent not just one idea. If you have scale put the developer in your shop. Now everyone has skin in the game.