Some good comments and feedback here. I was wondering how accurate the returns reported were. I was also wondering how close the trades were to actual tape execution. Seems like there is some discrepancy from the feedback thus far. That being said, although we don't have a complete sampling distribution, it is quite useful to look at a sample of the available weekly data. Draw your own conclusions. But keep in mind, this is why I asked if the outliers continued to profit over the long run (i.e. 10 YRS) and how accurate the reporting was. Otherwise, the overall set of systems doesn't look too promising from what I can see. Don't know how long this will stay up, but this is something that I like to see. Their website advertises to the effect that they contain over 7,000 systems from what I ascertained. Otherwise, the wording needs to change to reflect that. It is far different from what the previous poster said. Experienced users, please add to the discussion.
It is a little PR trick on C2's behalf. It says they MONITOR 7000+ system, because it is true, if a system has been dead for 3 years, C2 still monitors it. 7000 sounds much better than: We have 200 active profitable systems and 30 of them are actually worthy of subscription! Now picking a system on C2 is pretty much like picking a stock or a hedgefund, past performances are not guarantees of, bla,bla,bla....
our boy tim sykes remains #1 or #2 across the metrics on covestor. very nice! http://www.covestor.com/rankings/portfolio?perf=risk&q=tgr&tf=si
Therefore the winner/loser list I posted from above is potentially from the historical 7,000 actively monitored systems, no? Meaning that list in itself is irrelevant (in addition to the sample distribution I posted) if what you say is true (and I'm not saying it isn't, as I certainly didn't find 7,000 systems from looking around). Otherwise, how do you know if a system they are touting is even active or the trades were truly executed on some exchange vs. "hypothetical" trades? I.e. The system we were looking at originally could just be a "hypothetical (paper-trade) system based on 3 yrs, vs. actual results printed on the tape? If so, that is not very reassuring. "On C2, you will find over 7,223 trading strategies. You can combine these strategies to create your own hedge fund. Here's how." Come to think of it, I don't see the adjective "active" anywhere.
1. They are the best stock gainers by % from the last 7 days. 2. Yes, they are irrelevant since you don't know how young (too short track record) they are. Still fun to look at them. 3. They only show active systems on this list because the passive ones are overtaken by the active ones sooner or later. But if a vendor kills a system today, it can still show up on the monthly gainers for a month... 4. If a system is autotraded, then the real, executed trades are shown on the system's page. Otherwise they are hypothetical. 5. As long as the papertrade is realisticly filled by the C2 engine (thus not just touch but trade through) it is pretty close to the real deal...
As a subscriber to several systems at C2 I can confirm what rollextrader says. In my case all the system failures I experienced were with systems, both stock and futures, I traded with OptionsXpress so I had to stop using OX. The futures systems I trade with Open E Cry and the stock systems I trade with Interactive Brokers via a third party API (TradeBullet) sofar have been working fine and the results are pretty much the same as reported by C2. The bad eperience with C2's connectivity to OptionsXpress is even more disappointing to me since OX has an excellent auto-trading software for their roster of signal providers and, believe it or not, among all those quacks and frauds in this field I found two who have done an excellent job over the last two years. Don't ask me for their names, you will have to sift through all the data and performance reports of those signal providers and you will be amazed how much hype and misleading information you will find there. OptionsXpress is actually better in this respect than other brokers offering auto-trading because they only accept Registered Financial Advisors.
I had a system on C2 once. Let me tell you one way to game it. It was a scalping system where the trade would be held til near the end of the day. When you exit a trade near the EOD the reported price was usually way off the actual price. Who knows why. When the price wasn't in my favor I would report the price as incorrect (you just click on a button and tell him what actual price was) and it would be fixed. When it went for me, I obviously didn't say anything. This would probably only work for intraday scalping systems where pennies matter. It all adds up and can add a lot of percents every month.