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I have a system on C2, to supplement my trading with subscriber revenue. I can tell you, I am definitely rethinking my decision based on my experiences since i've been on the site in the last several months. Today was likely the nail on the coffin when C2 autotrade service was down for a limited time, but nonetheless had me fiddling with my VPS and such for hours. Apparently they made a conscious decision to take their database down to do some required maintenance, I would let that pass if it wasn't that THEY DIDNT TELL THEIR CUSTOMERS. The only mention of it was a forum post after the fact.
Arrived here researching Collective2 after watching a K. Davey webinar this evening.
Reminds me of Interactive Brokers (scheduled TWS shutdown and reboot of servers in the wee hours every morning) and HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Vogon explanation for destruction of Earth without apparent warning).
The common thread among IB, TWS, Hitchhiker and "annoying" is provision of service. Up to and including the destruction of the planet in the case of Hitchhiker.
I like Douglas Adams' ironic sense of humour (he wrote HitchHiker's Guide) and his other stories, and am thoroughly satisfied with IB even if TWS' need to shut down every 24 hours (avoidable by use of IB Gateway) and IB's need to reboot their servers at midnight EST drives me nuts because it potentially stresses my own homemade strategies that run continuously.
I enjoyed your webinar tonight enough to consider running the 3 pair Forex strategy since glimmers of the "expert follower" still exist in me .
Since it's served by a third party sought to research the 3rd party, the only unknown in the equation. I was interested in @gonzofist's remarks as another service provider (the apparent lack of warning in his post the trigger for my remarks, since even though scheduled I consider the interruption in IB service I've learned to live with an annoyance), wondering if you have any complaints about Collective2 as a platform.
I've been a member at Collective2 since 2005, nearly the beginning. The service has certainly come a long way since then. It still has issues from time to time, and sometimes accessing the website is annoyingly slow. Once in a while, I could not get in at all. But that has not happened recently.
I auto trade one system on there (my own), and in 7 months or so of doing so, there was only one time when my system went out of sync (due to a holiday open, where Tradestation forex opened a few hours before my C2 forex broker FXCM opened). Other than that, it has worked pretty well. I've never noticed significant delays between when I send an order, and when C2 broker fills it. But, I haven't checked every fill to see if this is the case.
Notably, with that particular system, I do simple market orders in, and market orders out. Very simple. Trades last days, so that reduces the opportunities for error. I'd be a little more scared running a high frequency strat there.
I have a couple other systems there that use stop orders, etc. They have more issues, but that is from developer to Collective2, not from Collective2 to end user broker.
All things considered, I think Collective2 does a good, but not perfect, job for the market it is in. I've used other signal provider services, and I find them comparable on number of issues, performance, etc.
I hope this helps!
P.S. I do recall the recent planned "unplanned" outage, and people complaining after the fact, which they rightly deserved to. It did not impact me. Years ago, I had a case where I had to hold an ES position over the weekend, because I could not get into their website. So, yes, these things do happen, and if the trading strategy was high frequency or relied on precisely timed entries/exits, your performance might be negatively impacted.
It does help, even if after I posted my reply to you it dawned on me given its trading frequency the 3 pair strategy likely does not require continuous connectivity. Even the bank I trust to hold most of my assets seems to have outages occasionally the moment (every few months) I want to access it.
My issue in the prior post had not been with frequency of service disruptions, but their process of handling them or rather lack of process. It gave me insight into how the company functions and the worrying disconnect between entities within the organization.
This and several other subjective reasons led me to leave the site entirely. The standard needs to be very high for sites that have access to not only your broker logins but also your credit card data, which is retained on their servers.
A little more research will lead you as it did me to more objective reasons not to trust this site with your financial future. In 2009 their database was breached and apparently logins,cc data were compromised Internet trading site collective2.com hacked | Office of Inadequate Security the e-mails users received (I was not a member then) were not explicit whether the data obtained was in plain text or hashed.
While no business is immune from a breach, I have come to expect a level of redundant security from other entities that hold this same level of information brokers,banks etc. that simply was not implemented before or after the breach. Your free to your own interpretation.
I get the feeling there are actually very few vendors and subscribers there. Maybe I am wrong about the subscribers, but good systems worthy of following are sure in short supply.
Now here is a moral question: Let's say I have found a good system with low fees and DD and decent returns, would I tell it to anyone? Probably not....