EUR Trading Signals - Collective2 vs. Zulutrade

Dear all,

When we decided to test the waters of trading signals provision last year, we picked two of our most easily replicable strategies and settled on Zulutrade and Collective2 for publishing.

As a provider on both platforms for several weeks now, we believe that although ZT does not require upfront subscription fees to participate, ultimately it is a more risky platform for followers than C2 because it does a poor job of representing a system's true risk profile. This is mostly due to the complete absence of equity and position sizing management. It creates a situation where it becomes the follower's job to allocate size to trades, when it should be the provider's responsibility to decide on a trade's relative worth. Also it protects reckless providers from downside exposure and allows strategies with average Risk:Reward ratios of up to 10:1 to look very profitable while ignoring the inevitable margin calls it exposes followers to. C2 on the other hand clearly displays accurate aggregate as well as per-trade return and drawdown data for systems, which lets prospective subscribers better assess risk potential,

ZT remain the much better interface however, with many more providers to choose from for followers in a more user-friendly environment, which is why we will keep on using both for the time being so that anyone can pick whichever they are most comfortable with.

For swing trading EUR/JPY - EUReka V - C2 or ZT



P&F

Hello there,
so so far, which platform is better - C2 or zulurade in terms of trades executions - sending/copying, profitability?

Hello domingo,

We can only reply from a provider's perspective, and as a follower we may have a different opinion. But so far we have found Collective2 better for all three criteria:
Execution is better because C2's price engine has tighter spreads than Zulutrade's price engine. Opening hours have also been longer during holidays.
Sending is easier because C2 has a trade blotter and all open/pending orders are displayed on the same page as opposed to Zulutrade where open positions and pending orders are on separate pages, which can lead to unnecessary confusion. But the most important factor is the fact that we control the size of each trade on C2 so it allows for true mirroring of the strategy. In Zulutrade, size is almost irrelevant in the strategies and the followers are the ones who must choose and apply it to each trade. The only thing providers can do is open several positions for the same trade, but this distorts the data and is not always possible to replicate for followers.
Finally in terms of profitability, C2 has a pretty clear fee mechanism even though they are starting to promote a commission-based pricing structure like Zulutrade's. The problem with the commission structure option is that systems with very low trade frequency struggle to generate commissions even if they are very successful. Whereas average systems which scalp can earn a lot of commission revenue. Since we do not trade a lot we can only generate a lot of revenue on Zulutrade if we get a lot of money to follow us, and in fact more specifically if the people who follow us trade large size (which we do not control). Plus, from what we have noticed, it is almost impossible to attract any interest in Zulutrade if you are not in the top 50.

Again, as a follower, we may see things differently, and even as a provider things may change but for now we prefer to use Collective2.

Hope it makes sense.

P&F

I see. First, let me thank you for the expensive reply.
it is quite different -from a follower and a traders point of view.
See, the way i see thing for me you are the guys that know (supposedly) how to trade and you should be able to do it on wherever platform you use - after all you are the one that want to sell your signal - supply and demand meet at some point - usually at a lower for you and higher price level for me - simple macros.

appart from that let me ask you - i've noticed you trade from demo and that you have followed also eureka III...do you also trade on demo accounts there (C2) or they do not allow it....

in terms of commisions.....do you generate (and here i mean based of followers) more on C2, as compared to ZT?

On C2 you also have the choice to link a demo or a live account.
We do not trade with brokers that are compatible with ZT and C2 and we were not going to open accounts just for the sake of having live performance linked to both platforms so we just decided to open a small one a link it to ZT since C2's statistics and broker data from our followers are good enough.

With regard to commissions, we generate more on C2. There are several reasons for that but the main ones are the fact that the vast majority of ZT's followers have very small account size (<$2000), and in order to attract the ones with very large account size you need to be ranked high which can be quite difficult since the ranking algorithm causes many well risk-adjusted systems to be overlooked for higher performing, even if much riskier, short-term looking systems. Also we do not have high frequency systems so it's very difficult to generate substantial commissions on ZT with less than 50 trades per month.

right right I see! So, you are in for the commissions here!

can you post your reasults from C2? if they are good enough i am sure a lot of people even on ZT would like to follow.

myself cannot afford to open an account with C2 - min account is too high that i can afford to have in forex.

C2. I will remember that. Ive a Zulutrade account and will follow you in demo. Thanks for the information

My advise is friend to forget that and remember only the fact that zulutrade is the only viable option out there that you will make money out of autotrading or copying trades. The rest will either blow your account in no time, give you extra commissions and slippage and bottom line loose all your money

I've decided that all the autotrade systems are no good.

C2 - C2 is the best I have found in my research. But you're going to need $20-50,000 to have a sense of sureness of a profit due to the fixed fees and overheads on the systems. If you have that amount of money don't do this - there are plenty more things to do with your cash! I do like that you can trade commodities but it's still forex focused. Some systems only charge when profitable but you can't search with that as a variable. You also can't search by what is traded if for example you are bullish on certain currencies for example. Rubbish. I also don't like the way fees are directly debited from your brokerage account.

Zulutrade - Charges whenever you make a trade be that profit or loss. It's great that it's a sliding scale but the more trades made the more profit to the system provider and also the broker. What a load of rubbish! It took some researching to find this out and that opaqueness, boardering on dishonesty angers me. edit: I've just read that actually they only charge 15% in each month only if profitable. The ZuluTrade website itself tries to make out the whole thing is free. What's the reality?

FXCM built in offer (forget the name of edit: MirrorTrader, provided by Tradency) - Looks fine. I don't even know what they charge on pips and they didn't, wouldn't, couldn't give me a case study on the fees.

The other problem for all is lack of track record on the systems providers. Personally I'm OK with that. I prefer unregulated systems. But what a risk! Why not develop a system that indicates "Buy my company"?! If AIM and smaller markets were to become available this seems like a real risk. edit: MirrorTrading mitigates this.

Autotrade systems are a great idea but they just all seem to be a rip off at the moment, taking advantage of people not doing their due diligence.

Care to disagree?

edit:
A case study in costs for the various systems would be useful. Also a sample of the pip spread would also be a good idea. I have asked the various providers but only the fixed fee systems have been able to give me a straight answer.

Also seen this:
Tradency used to charge the brokers a volume fee of 1-2 pips per trade, though since a change in strategy in 2011, they now also offer a different model whereby they charge the brokers a monthly technology fee for each active user (in the region of a few tens of dollars).

eToro: have some pretty wide spreads so already ZuluTrade seems to be cheaper.

Curensee: are the only one to change fees according to your profit and also the results are more accurately recorded; no simulation but real total performance so it's more easy and seems more honest. No demo accounts and need bigger deposits. 20% fee on profits but 2% fee annual on funds makes it seem expensive but it does mean that high frequency trades are not more expensive unlike on Zulu so I like that aligned incentive.

Ayondo is new and up and coming. They have a nice incentive vetting on providers. Few providers trading real funds but similar in fees to Zulu. Sounds interesting.

So which is the best?

jago,

That's a decent review of the most viable mirror trading options out there.

We originally posted this thread with a provider's perspective so we will let you argue with others the value of each service from a follower's point of view.

Let us just point out that keeping Currensee aside as it only caters to customers at the higher end of the retail spectrum, top providers at Collective2 seem more attractive than top providers at Zulutrade/Tradency/eToro simply because of the better risk vetting process available on C2 which mitigates the fact that providers may not explicitly link a real account to their results.

And from our experience as a provider on both C2 and Zulutrade, we can guarantee you that the incentive to practice responsible trading is much stronger on C2 than on Zulutrade, simply because irresponsible and risky trading behaviour on Zulutrade can nonetheless be financially rewarding due to the per-trade commission pricing structure.

I went with ayondo because they only charge when profitable and per trade. I then chose a low frequency trader.
I couldn't invest much though because there only seems to be one user on the site trading with live funds.

Ayondo fees seemed most honest of the bunch. However, you have to be a bit wise to find the low frequency profitable traders. Looking at the number of followers on most systems people are going for the high frequency traders attracted by the seemingly high profit, probably unaware that profits will be eaten by fees because they didn't do their own due diligence (Ayondo markets to the average German consumer).

Hopefully we'll see some more real currency trading as the site establishes itself.

Perhaps a trader with a live balance at C2 trumps this though. I kind of wrote off Currensee due to that standing fee - why is it the higher end of the retail spectrum? C2 like to take fees by directly debiting my brokerage account balance... I didn't like that at all, otherwise I'd be using them now.

Dear all,

Today we are celebrating our system's 1 year anniversary

We still provide our EUR/JPY signals on both Zulutrade and Collective2 and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future even though the low trading frequency makes it poorly adapted to Zulutrade's commission mechanism.

As per Collective2's statistics, our system has returned 116% in Year 1 for 20.1% max Drawdown. Our Sharpe ratio is 2.85 and our Calmar ratio is 6.1.

This data places us as the best risk-adjusted performing FX system on Collective2. Also, it is the best performing system among all systems (FX, Stocks, Futures, Options) 1 year and older with more than 100 trades, less than 25% max DD, and a > 2 Sharpe.

Zulutrade performance is a bit different since they do not emphasize risk much but still we are the provider with the lowest max DD in the top 100 as well as the provider with the highest ROI to max DD ratio in the top 100 (x15!!).

Tomorrow (as with any day) may be the start of the worst DD in the system's history so we thought we'd pat ourselves on the back as a birthday present.

Check us out!

Best regards,

Hello there friend, what is your zulutrade signal name, so I can check you out?

Are you still on zulutrade or you actually blow your account ? any results from this years trading?
how is your Collective2 performance going on? especially for the followers?

I have done a lot of research on Collective2 and ZuluTrade and have ended up going with Collective2 which has been a great experience and very profitable. Here is my detailed Collective2 Review but keep in mind, in this review im talking about futures, but its the same for Forex trading.