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In terms of transparency and lack of hype, C2 is one of the best venue for third party systems. They are also a CTA.
Also take a look at Striker and Attain. They are reputable brokers who offer systems by third party developers and have no vested interest in the fee charged by the developers.
Stay away from any vendor (like Viper or SMD) who's results are from backtests, not live trading accounts.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Auto strategies alone are not enough for a successful trading. Quite often strategies are based on the developer's style like a custom dress and need to be adapted according to the market conditions. In order to build your own strategy you need to manage the following conditions:
1) You know the market conditions
2) You manage discretionary trading to activate/deactivate strategy when needed
2) You know the logic behind the strategy
3) Your instruments are precise: good broker,good datafeed,correct coding,correct backtesting and reconciliation with live
4) Your backtesting is consistent in duration and quality of data recording
I am not saying I manage them all, but to accomplish them you need to do your own home works, that means picking up pieces on forums like futures.io (formerly BMT) and adapting them to your own style.
Has anyone had any personal experience with striker, attain or collective 2 or know anyone that has. I've never taken signals or auto traded so it would be great to hear of any experiences good or bad. Not sure if I should have started a new thread. Thanks.
I know this post is wildly out of date but I was rummaging around for some automated
strategy ideas and wanted to tell you how much I admired your last post. The answers to
your question were so negative and unhelpful I'm glad to see they didn't turn you off.
There are people on this blog who are very knowledgeable and willing to help (fattails, mwinfrey
and others) then there are the know-it-all's who don't want to do anything but piss on your
ideas and make you feel you're an idiot for even having one. You know the guys, the ones with
thousands of posts in a short amount of time...makes you wonder when they find time to trade. I was
particularly struck with the one who emphatically stated that anyone with a successful bot would not
sell it. I know for a fact that isn't true.
I started a little thread last Aug or Sept that started out on one subject then veered into something
else. But, I felt the new direction could be helpful. I thought that those of us who were profitable
(didn't have to be a pro or a millionaire just making a little money) probably had a little trick or two we
could pass along to the beginners to help them get started. Well, you know the ending, the thread ended up
in one big fight until Big Mike mercifully shut it down. The whole thing was so demoralizing I don't even come
on this blog anymore unless I'm looking for an indicator or strategy. I sure as hell don't get in any discussions.
I know this is damning with faint praise but, believe it or not, there are blogs much more infested than
this one....trade2win comes to mind.
Autobots like all systems that use market inefficiencies will be exploited until they don't work. I am suspicious of any free system that is given away to prospective customers, because sometimes they have exploited the inefficiencies and have stopped working. Maybe I am just cynical. ;-)
Why do you need other users to do this? Why would you not just do this yourself? Seems risky to let other users get it, because then it is out of your hands and THEY can resell it.
As per usual, I tend to agree with Mike and Sam on this one. . however, I've come to have a more nuanced view over time, and I know first hand that there are exceptions to this 'quality strategies will never be sold' rule.
The theory goes, if you have a working automated strategy, one that requires no manual interference or subjectivity or altering or parameters, and its been consistently profitable for you (live, not backtest) and you have great faith in its logic (perhaps you've confirmed it exceptional results marketwide, or at least amongst the highly correlative instruments), why not throw all your own money at it, and immediately get filthy rich?
There are a few variables here. Firstly, the available bankroll of the creator of the strategy. Someone that has only 10k to spare, before he'd be homeless and hungry, is a bit foolish to play around (with leverage, to boot!) in the markets at all, let alone at a significant enough pace to become filthy rich in any reasonable amount of time (especially using the 'never risk more than 1% of your bankroll' rule).
The second thing to consider is the type of strategy itself. . is it liable to suffer from the effects of 'saturation', if a few individuals are investing using its logic, simultaneously? Is the strategy creator likely to face increased slippage and thus inferior fills, because of piggy-backed trades? This depends on the instrument and time or day, as well as bar increment being used, in my opinion. Trading in 'day' increments within an instrument with extremely heavy volume is, of course, not likely to face any saturation concerns anytime soon. . . but trading an obscure commodity over very slow trading hours, yes, it can have an effect.
Thirdly, it would depend on the goals of the strategy creator. Does he want nothing more than maximal financial gain? Or does he want the ego stroking that comes with being the cause of others' good fortune? Or perhaps he's attempting to establish some word of mouth and reputation, in order to land a managed account with a serious investor and equally serious bankroll?
Also, I think it would depend on how efficiently he can create likely-profitable strategies in the future. Was this created strategy upon which he attained some live walk success a one-off, a major market inefficiency that was stumbled upon, a lucky blessing as opposed to a disciplined approach that could be repeatable with enough time/effort? If a strategy creator believes he has the strategy 'factory' designed (a powerful optimizer, a great deal of processing power, methods to test the level of robustness or curve-fitted-ness, etc) that can produce more of these over time, he may actually be willing to part with something of real value.
Having said that, the marketplace is an absolute minefield, with quite a few snakes and hucksters, and a significant number of delusional or incompetent vendors that seem to truly believe in their products, despite the fact that there is little to no evidence as to why they (or anyone else) should, so at the very least I would do your reputation homework.
Speaking personally, I would buy from a vendor only if I were able to know, at least broadly, their means and methods of creation, as well as get a feel for their personality type. These two things matter so, so much more than even live results do, imho. . and they should to everyone else as well. Live results, unless you're speaking of at least a year or two or more, are likely to be a very small data pool from which to judge. The success or failure after you see just 10-20 trades is like judging a players basketball ability after watching them take a single shot or two, its not a very meaningful gauge (I've run the numbers to prove the predictive ability of various sizes of live-trade results, if anyone is interested). However, if the person was disciplined and conservative in their approach, prudent, focused on risk avoidance more than catching gains, and followed the standard set of 'best practices' when it comes to optimizations and systematic trading in general, I'd be a bit intrigued.
I should add that the results of any SINGULAR strategy shouldn't mean much to anyone, ever, under any circumstances. I think the only way a systematic trader can prove they have some skill or true predictive ability is by proving over *thousands* of trades, over multiple strategies, in a live/sim real-time account (strictly run, counting EVERY gain and loss without any cherry picking, and including realistic commission and slippage considerations), that shows impressive results. This proves that they are likely onto something, their core logic and their methods are proving themselves to be capable and successful. . . as opposed to proving that one strategy has fared well. Absolutely anyone can create 10-20 strategies, follow them for a year, and choose the two or three best of these to hail as a new holy grail. . and this is exactly the type of thing I see happening almost universally amongst systematic traders, and especially those that sell automated strategies.
Pardon the novel. Just my two cents, on a subject near and dear to me