I'm subscribed to The Beatles ans The Rolling Stones.
As stated in the description The Beatles is much more aggressive. So when opening a long position and the markets keeps falling, The Beatles scales more and more into the long position (hoping, that there will be a bounce soon to exit at break even or with a tiny profit). I would say that the market timing entries are good to excellent, when the market keeps in a uptrend. The Beatles buys fast pullbacks and exits them as fast, when a rebound occurred. There is a problem, when the rebound doesn't come and The Beatles starts to scale into a losing position, to average down the entry price. So you can get huge draw downs in your equity curve. If you trade it, don't leverage this system too much into your account. Me as a discretionary trader has sometimes the same strategy to sit some huge sell offs out, so this makes this system not diversified to my strategy, you need to know this.
The Rolling Stones doesn't normally average down the entry price, which makes it less aggressive, but at the end also hopes that the markets will rebound after a heavy sell off to exit at break even or with a tiny profit.
Both systems often move stops further down, which makes sense, but you need to know this.
Main problem will be a -20% sell off without any rebounds. Then you can have easily a draw down of 50% to 70%.
If you're seeking for good entries and if you have a good risk management, those systems are excellent!
I used to trade this system and saw that with anybig movement in volatility you can get wiped out. No system is worth getting wiped out and this one can do that. Without black swan events you can make a decent return, however you are always at risk of losing 1/2 your account or all of it. I saw this coming and got out prior. I was lucky.
System with good diversification and low correlation between the futures that trade. The owner make a kind of hedge between different futures, for example Bonds and Indexes, as result of that the equity curve dont have big downs. I dont give 5 stars because is too short the historical but i hope in 1 year i can give to this system 5 stars because is working as well is doing now
I have signed up for this system a month ago and followed the instructions of the system vendor to allocate minimal US$20.000 capital which I did. Soon after this system caused a margin call in my Interactive brokers account on a drawdown and started auto-liquidating positions. On contacting Yanping Zhang they system manager he told me to only trade 1/3rd of the signals because he bases position size on "current" account value instead of the allocated capital mentioned on Collective2.
But when I read the "description" tab on this page it says: "Messages to subscribers
1. Capital: I recommend trading this system with at least 20k to generate a decent income after the fees. If your capital is different from the system's total equity, make sure you scale your trades accordingly".
So don't make the same mistake as I did. If you start just configure Collective2 to trade 0.3 of the position size.
When you follow that recommendation, please also divide the "annual Return" by 3 to get a more realistic idea of the annual Returns using that position size.
For example, on 10/07/2014 I had US$20.000 allocated to this system and as Interactive Brokers requires - 4.2x the option premium collected as the margin requirement the excess capital available was US$1398 only. With other words when the drawdown crossed the 7% mark Interactive brokers started auto-liquidating positions. I haven't seen any other system vendors on Collective2 base position size on "current" value so this was new to me (I trade systems on Collective2 for 16 month's now).
Another thing to consider is this. On black monday in 1987 the VIX changed 313% in a single day and I made a rough estimation that the loss would be approx US$40.000. With other words on a day with extreme moves like black monday your account would probably be wiped out. I asked my coach a long time trader how to reduce such risk and he told me that he traded on 9/11 and told me that on those days the bid/ask spread can be extremely wide, he said so wide, he have seen 200 or 300 points spread that day on options depending on the symbol so he said on a day like that it will be impossible to get out at a decent loss so he recommended me using a spread or at least entering a stop-loss before entering the trade to minimize the extreme open ended risk a bit.
Another thing to consider are opening gaps. The market the VIX options are traded is open just a couple of hours a day so if something happens overnight you can't get out of your position like you can with many futures nowdays. Opening gaps can be very large if things happen overnight in Asia or Europe and this strategy have open ended risk so opening gap is another thing to consider here. I shared my concerns and asked Mr. Yanping Zhang from YZ Income Fund on 8/28/14 why he does not set a stop-loss before entering trade and his answer was: "good job, and keeping digging. no one knows the future, I just try my best to do a better job and make money for my clients. Thanks YZ". The answer was not satisfying me and it kept me thinking. On 10/6/14 I asked him if he can help me suggest a stop-loss if I'd like to use one and proposed to set one 7 points above the strike price and the answer I got back was: "trading is art, follow your own judgement." So that leaves me to end my review of this system. I'd like to share you one lesson from the book "Hedge Fund Market Wizards" from Jack Schwager: Lesson: 39 "Volatility and Risk Are Not Synonymous". Low volatility does not imply low risk and high volatility does not imply high risk. Investments subject to sporadic large risks may exhibit low volatility if a risk event is not present in the existing track record. For example, the strategy of selling out-of-the-money options can exhibit low volatility if there are no large, abrupt price moves, but is at risk of asymptotically increasing losses in the event of a sudden, steep selloff. So some strategies, such as option selling, can have both low volatility and large, open-ended risk, and some strategies, can have both high volatility and constrained risk.
Risk control has been a disaster over the last 2 sessions, I thought YZ had controls in place, yet drawdown has exploded to -35%, he should have massively reduce your positions between -5% and -10% as usual, accounts are getting wiped out, what happened???????? I wonder whether the SP was in front of his screens.........
This system will perform when the market it trending up. But just like any other dip buying program they will drawdown during an extended downtrend. If you feel the market is in an uptrend then try this system. If not I would say stay away. Im not trying to be negative towards this system. I may subscribe again at a later time. Im just bearish on this market now.
Despite the great initial performance caution is advised. Developer does not give any background information about himself or the system development. In the description he says system is 100% mechanical - so where are the back tested results? Systems which trade one agricultural contract intra day only historically had poor performance on C2.
Very nice return with low drawdowns. I hope the success continues. I don't run any stop loss like the other reviewer as I believe they are built into the system.
Jiong
This system had a good start with decent communication from the developer. As time has gone on communication has become less and less. We are in all time drawdown high's and no communication from the developer other than he is making the stops bigger because he is sick and tired of being stopped out and then watching the stock run. The reason I joined this system was because I knew Kevin is quiet a thorough statistician and his backtesting skills are exceptional. I hope we are not losing our edge here. I guess time will tell.
It used to be a good system, but seems like the developer change something in the system, and sadly in 2 weeks the system kill almost all the earns of the year.
it used to be a smart system until it became focused only on going long any minimum pullback. This behaviour is killing profits, as the trend has clearly changed since more than a month. But this system can't learn that.
I've had a bad experience w/systems but this system is a diamond in the rough. I hope the developer is not close to retiring because I hope this system will be around for years. The system trades are very logically to me, as I watch the S&P500 every day, and this system seems to be a scale-in mean reversion system. I am using it as the mean-reversion part of my portfolio, because I am too chicken to always ride out the corrections...I prefer trend-following and I will use that strategy for my "normal" non-futures portfolio. I like this system a lot and I recommend it. Thank you, Mr./Ms. Market Signals.
I think is the only one system in C2 with so big picture of his history perform where you can see how it works in bull and bear markets, I think is one of the best stock systems (or the best) in C2 and the only one that can probe it along the years...
The only thing because i dont give to this system 5 stars, is that Uyen Le has to improve his "psicology" and when is necessary close a trade that doesnt work properly (use better mental stoploss), but its a question very easy to solve for us, you only must put your own stoploss in your autotrading.
This system is too risky as it tends to go against trend aiming for a quick pullback that often doesn't arrive and so losing positions are left open increasing the losses. For my experience, I don't recommend it.
Some nice trades since I subscribed. So far I'm happy. Unfortunately, reviewing a provider after a couple weeks is meaningless. I'd prefer to write a review after a couple months or more but apparently C2 doesn't allow this. Sigh...
System started out OK but I ran into the drawdown during July and August. It might perform well in the long term, but you'd want to have a good buffer of capital to withstand the drawdowns. I think the developer has a good understanding of what makes a successful trading system, and implementing good risk management.
So far so good, the system uses good risk management, and has a very realistic 52% win rate. Avg. winners $490 vs. $380 avg loss. These stats are vastly better than most systems on here. Novices are drawn to the ROI% numbers without digging deeper into the trade stats. This system doesn't draw-down 10% to win 1%. I ran some analysis on all the trade results and found a $550 stop loss improves the overall max-drawdown so that's what I've been using and it is working well.
I've been trading The Spirit of Nicolas Darvas since last fall and, so far, I'm very happy with the strong and steady performance. I will post updates as necessary.
I spend over $7,000.00 a year with C2 for system subscriptions and for Collective2 Software Licenses. This developer has abandoned his systems and subscribers; leaving them in a devastating draw-down; even though he has worked his way out of similar draw downs in pre-subscriber simulations. Look at this system as the type of system you don't want to subscribe to. Multiple day trades that make it look like the developer knows what he's doing but subscribers never receive the same. These systems don't trade the same way after they have subscribers. The results in reality are different from the results in simulation.
I have reviewed C2 stock programs and found Emerging S is the best because:
1. High winning % - 86%.
2. Low draw down - 4.2%.
3. It has back tests upon request, with the max down around 13% during the Bear Markets.
4. Low cost.
I have asked the back test numbers for the last 2-Bear Market and last 5 pull backs. I know in Jan this year, the market was down more than 5% but Emerging S was up.
Please tell if I said anything wrong here or you find a better stock trading program.
Yulin
I’ve subscribed to the system for about half year. So far, I’m profitable. The system trades very infrequently. It’s pretty suitable for people who have a regular day time work. I believe the developer has some edge in picking winning stocks, while it is obvious to confirm that will take longer period. If some short-term trading techniques could be incorporated into the system, it will be more attractive. I’m looking forward to a consistent performance.
In a month of virtual autotrading at 10% I "made" $16 and spent (no quotes) $100. I give it a "fair" because other systems lost me a lot more money...
By the way. I've been looking at Collective 2 for 10 years now, lost a few tau. Is anybody making money?
