Alphergence - O2C
A very interesting system with good stats. Worth a close look. I would recommend it.
THE SUBSCRIBER PERSPECTIVE
Strategy reviews
Real experiences. In subscribers' own words.
Read what worked, what didn't, and what it was like to follow a strategy.
PIPALERT
A great short term trading method that takes advantage of volatility. As can be seen from the equity curve, taking advantage of volatility can lead to unconfortable riding of a draw down from time to time however with good knowledge of market behaviour this is benefited from historically with PIPALERT. Requires comitment and guts to reach well earned gains and enviable overall statistics.
Ichimoku-Can
After a very good stat, I joined in and then system immediately got into a BIG draw down, it got out this first draw down OK, and then another BIG draw down followed up. This one turned into BIG loss. I think this system got potential but very risky and probably beyond most subscriber's risk tolerance level. Most of us subscribers want to build equity slowly and consistently. From this lesson, I will never pick a young system with only a couple months history since it always turned BAD after I subscribed.
Futures Trader Daily Mini
Created after the bigger system Futures Trader Daily, we could have hoped for a good start for this one. Erratic equity curve, expensive stops. After nearly one year, this model is no longer valid, despite good looking backtests. It would be at least a nice gesture to lower the monthly fees, it no longer makes any sense.
S&P ETF TIMER
Nothing special here. Started out nicely but has fallen on hard times and has not been able to turn it around. In time it may be able to regain its winning ways but how long do you hang on?
Strawberry Rhubarb FX
A very well managed system with stop losses. I have observed sound and determined recovery when a trade goes into the red. If indicators are unclear, he does not trade which I appreciate and then he more than makes it up when he gets the green light. Clearly this manager is not only good at what he does, he enjoys it too.
Value and Trending Stocks
The system was doing well before I joined. In fact it was doing so well and the equity curve looked perfect. So I decided to give it a try. Soon after I joined, it started to go South as evidenced by the sharp downward slope on the equity curve. And this is just the beginning, it seem it is gathering the momentum to go down further. In fact it is happening to me more the once that most systems were doing well and after I joined, it start to behave differently. They are trying to prove to me that the warning on the risk of trading futures on every page is valid that you are likely to loose money. It's tough making money trading futures. I wonder how successful are people trading for a living?
PIPALERT
This is a total non technical review, justified by some recent unfair comments. I am autotrading this system. I closed that trade at a loss but relatively early, however past experience shows that this system has "hiccups" from time to time which are well recovered. I trust it will happen again. Unfortunately drawdowns do and can happen. At the end Pipalert is still up some +40% YTD, has more than two years of life and its performance has been positive: it has gained a lot of chances to show its resiliency. I can be wrong but I am sticking with it. All my sympathy to the developer in such a difficult moment.
PIPALERT
The trade currently at -39% was my first one with the system. Bad luck. I only lost 2%, with stop loss. I did some analysis on it and it's risk/profit ratio is about 5:1 avg. If it was 1:1, profitable trades = 40%. It's quite stupid to use martingale trading like this, but if you didn't see the crash coming, you need to look at the chart more carefully. Each drawdown was recovered from by 3x position reinforcement. Risky and stupid. Would be a much better system if it had some losses in it. It's not useful for trading but it's ok as an advisory indicator if you are trading FX. For the price of subscription, you can use it to support your own decisions. It had some good calls overall. That is, if it will not be shut down after this. Too bad,with some losses it could have been a good system.
PIPALERT
Basically you dont believe in stop losses because wow you only have 3 losing trades. Well crash and burn seems to be the route many go with on C2 and you def are a crash and burn mentality to make the "percentage good." No thanks anymore! Thansk for the little bump in money and then throwing it all away.
PIPALERT
Yet one more high flying system at C2 bites the dust. Unable to fathom the gunslinger mentality of most developers on C2. Just when things are looking good, they go ahead and shoot themselves and their subscribers. What a pity!
PIPALERT
I guess I will be the first to rate this disaster. The current trade should have never been kept open over the weekend heading into the EU Summit. It probably would have been prudent to stop all trading late last week. Certainly as an investor I could and should have stopped the trade on my own. High win-rate forex systems always end in disaster. This may not be the end of Pipalert but I have lost confidence in the system.
Marathon Trading
Wanting well over 2:1 profit factor is not realistic during past months. Letting the last three open trades turn from over +$1,500 on the table profit into -$381, -$398 and -$9 in realized losses is not good trade management. With $150 pay-only-if-profitable subscription fee and about 26 current subscribers according to autotrade data, the vendor will be up with current trading strategy while subscribers will be fairly flat. For all the above mentioned, 2 stars. I hope to see the overall strategy improve here, and not make this system become a subscriber cash cow.
Basket Futures I
I have been manually trading Basket Futures for some time and so far this is one of the system I like the most in the Collective 2 universe (together with Pipalert). The developer is caring about the subscribers, has market vision (incredible market timing on some contracts, especially energy ) and tries to limit the risks. Probably the only limitation lies in the management of whipsaws market phases, but, sincerely, this is a constraint that virtually any sistem has. I am waiting for a bear market to see whether Basket Futures can handle it so profitably as bull phases but so far, so good (statistics speak for themselves). I am not giving full grades just because the system is young but I wish it future successes to award an upgrade.
PIPALERT
Impossible trade because open the orders at market and i trade manually and i dont have time to make trade. I see this system only for autotrade, but i am interesting only in continue with my broker, because of this i unsuscribe it.
Topaz NQ100 M
The developers of the system are disciplined and self-confident. The system will probably be alright in the long run, but does not appear to have a significant edge. It does well when the market does its "normal" oscillations, but is completely wrongfooted when the market tanks decisively. It adds insult to injury by trying to catch falling knives that no good discretionary trader would touch. This of course is a hard thing to avoid for any mechanical system. Buying deep in-the-money call options of a market index probably has better risk/reward characteristics, and is much much simpler.
ETF Timer
What happened in summer 2010? The system started to be the perfect contra indicator. Is that just a random occurrence that nearly every signal is profitable if one just trades the opposite? For already over a year?
This is the strangest thing I saw in a long time. There cant be such a strong structural change in the markets to make nearly every signal of the system suddenly not working since summer 2010.
Futures Trader Daily
The last review was too harsh. The system might be at a crossroads though. PL has fallen to 1:3 and sharpe has fallen below 3. The system is essentially flat since April. Over the last several months the system has done a lot of churning with not much result. I just dont know....
Futures Trader Daily
I lasted about 7 days and that is all I could take. Every trade began as a negative trade and of those, I believe that one actually turned out to be a mildly profitable trade. He keeps positions over the weekend which in my opinion, is not a good idea, He trades on big news days or has positions outstanding on those days which in my opinion, is not a good idea. I would not use this system at all. I suppose for not so faint of heart, it is OK, but not for me.
Relax Forex
2 trades a month, 1 buy then 1 sell. If the timing is NOT good you lose all you want. See the result for may-sept 2011. That mean if you traded the opposite these 4 months you won. Good luck for the good timing
Topaz NQ100 M
I assumed that TOPAZ system is resilient enough to withstand the US financial crisis of 2008, it should withstand the current European crisis. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case during last 3 months. The system doubles down for losing positions and there is very little chance for a stock to recover in 12 days in this volatile market. So far, this system fails miserably in bearish and volatile market. The developer also raised his subscription price by 50 pct. recently and should consider lowering it due to very poor performance.
Daily Batch
I have been a subscriber since July. The developer is a great communicator. All trades have profit targets and stop losses. The system stats are very good. He has worked to add cattle trades to the system which says he is continuing to try and add value to the system. I would recommend it.
Topaz NQ100 M
Would be nice to be able to trust the system right now, but with 4 months of losses wiping out an entire year of gains, the drawbacks of 100% automation outweigh the positive for the near term. In these unprecedented market conditions, it is impossible to have reasonable hope that any gains are not going to be destroyed by the system tripling down on spiraling stocks that have simply no realistic chance of recovering within the automatic 10 day timeframe. Nor has any attempt been made to limit the number of buys: C2 automated margin calls on bad days can cause a lot of damage even for subs who judiciously manage their own position sizes. Rather than sitting here worrying about “missing†any gains, I think it’s time to shut it down and sit it out until (if/when) it stabilizes.
FXprofisniper
I dont think its fair to rate a system after trading it a couple of weeks. FXprofisiniper has very good system stats. I have been trading it for several months and I do not consider it a martingale system. In both instances of a winning or losing trade the developer will sell part of the position to either lock in gains or cut losses. I think the system is great. Hes 9/9 in winning months with a PL of 5.3:1 You cant trash a system like that in only a couple short weeks.
Testing2
I agree with the latest review and disagree with the one before. I have been subscribing Mod Trader in the last month and I am (moderately!) satisified. At the end statistics of this system are still good, starting from average profit/average loss. At least this system is not trying to catch the wrong trade du jour like many other systems here at C2 (in the last month we saw too many of them going long Euro or Pound when it was evident they were on the brink of collapse). I am sticking with it because it gives balance to my accoount and I think performance will come back in more normal times.