C2 allows traders to follow paper traders. Non-paper traders can have their systems certified by C2 as 'non-paper trading' accounts. So subscribers are made aware of both types of accounts.
What the OP is doing is taking zero risk in exchange for a fee to show successful hypothetical trading results (like duh, huh?). "Trading system vendors" do that all the time. At this point, it's just a matter of whether Baron wants to brand him as a vendor or not to keep posting. After all, Baron needs to pay the bills too, right?
If you see what Marketsurfer is allowed to do, there should be no problem for OP. At least if everybody is treated the same way...
Check out this: https://collective2.com/details/110267102 He made 600% in a month, but he is bound to blow out his account, as he has no market timing ability, only to keep adding losing positions until he is maximum leveraged. So once he is caught with a long trend, he will go broke. What this means, is that you can't tell whether a strategy will work until it performs longer than a few months. There were many strategies at C2 that performed well during months, or even 1 or 2 years, but finally blow up.
All funds have be doing this for many many years.I mean they take zero risk trading for people and take fee.
I did it and it is not slippage, C2 accounts it as commission. Now if one uses the autotrader feature that costs extra for the subscriber (in this case the computers do everything, executing trades in the subscriber's broker account), although I am not sure if that is $9 extra per return, sounds too much. I complained about this to Matt at C2.(14 vs. $5 in real life) If we just use C2 as a proving your method, and specially for systems trading very frequently, those 9 bucks extra per trade add up, so you could/should calculate the real return by adding trade number X $9. Assuming your trade number of 55 is average for the last 4-5 trading day, you should add about 2K to your profits monthly. (4 weeks x $500) Disclaimer: I am known as the accountant of ET.
I would say $10 dollars for commission + slippage is realistic ball park estimate for each YM lot when paper trading. $14 dollars isnt far off that.
He surely was not for a long time. But he was more or less forced to put his status on vendor by all he was posting. With his miraculous book "Beat the machines" it became impossible not to be a vendor. I have no clue if, and how much, he is paying now. He has a "special" relation with Baron apparently.