Collective2 Reviews 31

Collective2 is very good feature where we can trust the system for auto trading and control the risk, scale up the strategies we like. You can simulate first and then decide to actually subscribe to strategy or not. Customer support is very knowledgeable and helpful

I have been a Collective2 user for over 10 years. This review will cover 2 separate issues: the trustworthiness of Collective2 (C2), and my user experience with the trading strategies profiled there.

In a nutshell, I trust C2 in their core functions of providing accurate information and trade-following technology. Reporting of trading strategy histories is spot-on in my experience. The results shown on their web site match the results I have gotten trading those strategies, and the statistics are accurate as well. The auto-trading technology has worked well for me.

As for the trading strategies themselves, I can report that there are some excellent traders on C2 that will make you money, but there are also some less competent that can lose you money as well. Learning to recognize which is which is a skill in itself. You need to understand the math around trading, especially win rates, profit factor, leverage, and maximum drawdown. Sustainability (length of track record) is also key. How has the system performed during corrections? What you want to see is that a trader follows a consistent strategy with a steady account gain. Does the trader communicate with subscribers? Generally I have found that a blank system description is a warning flag.

Some traders try to game the system by taking big risks for big wins early on, so that their strategy shows a high cumulative gain to attract subscribers, then they start trading their usual risk and gains flatten out or become erratic. Always check a Trade Leader's profile and see how many past strategies they created and whether they are still functioning. The other key thing to look for is averaging down, i.e. they keep adding to a loser until it becomes a winner. Every experienced trader knows that over time that is a very slippery slope that can end in disaster.

Over the years C2 has enhanced their reporting and rating so that it is easier to find the reliable Trade Leaders and create an effective portfolio. But always keep in mind that C2 is a marketplace and performance tracker, not a certifier. It is up to you to vet the Trade Leaders and invest prudently.

Really like the platform and would recommend them to anyone. Very easy to navigate and use. Also their team is responsive to my questions/concerns. Can’t recommend them enough.

I am very happy with them, and not only for the money I am earning, but for the excellent behavior they have had when something went wrong, without needing to tell them, they acknowledged it and compensated me.

I've been subscribing to and trading Collective2 systems for over 15 years now. I currently subscribe to 6 of them. It's the only place I've found where I can follow the trades of successful traders and be able to base my subscription decisions from verifiable track records. Some systems I trade manually, and some systems I let Collective2 trade for me automatically. The auto-trading technology is solid.

one of the best mirror trading platform

Amazing platforms. One of a kind community. Safe. Supported. Magnetic.

Solid Idea, but greedy on fee's.

They charge the strategy manger and auto trader monthly sub fees which makes sense.. But than will take 40-50% of the subscription fees... Crazy

Not hard to figure out why trading talent in strat managers is slim on the site. Not worth it when they take half the bacon.

I would think they would want to pay trading talent so they have more people sign up for autotrading... But what do I know.

I started using Collective2 about 13 months ago as a Trade Leader (3Algo). The yearly gains are based on starting equity minus the current equity, then divide the profit or loss by starting equity. The result is compounded gain or loss same as any index, such as S&P 500. One can move the courser over the performance graph and see the starting equity and the current equity. On Collective2 there are a lot of people who try to be Trade Leaders by averaging down on losing trades or increasing the number of contracts or shares after a losing trade. Eventually they encounter a market that keeps going down and the result is 80% or greater equity drawdown. The way to choose Trade Leaders is to look at their past trades. If they average down or increase the number of contracts after losses, avoid them. There are a few good traders that use proper money management and have good trading systems, but to find them you have to look at the past trades. See if the number of contracts traded is consistent. Profits and losses should be consistent, and the track record should not be based on a few enormous wins. I do wish that Collective2 would not post publicly the trading results of anyone using Martingale (increasing the number of contracts or shares after each loss) or averaging down more than once per trade, which will eventually always result in huge losses for subscribers. That would help many investors (subscribers) by weeding out traders that take enormous risks to attract subscribers. Collective2 does have a useful ranking system that uses many criteria, such as age of the strategy, size of the drawdowns, leverage used, Sharp and Sorrentino Ratios, and annualized return percentage. They have a video on this, but one has to be a subscriber (free or paid) to get access to it. It is called scoring-workbench. They do have excellent customer service.

I trade C2 with auto trading. Its working good since 4 months now. The Equity curves are true and a good mirror of my own IB account.
I have found some very good stock strategies to follow with auto trading. I think there is no other company which offeres to trade unleveraged stocks in your own account with very low commissions.
100 stocks cost 1$ per order.

For all new EU People:

-you need an C2 Gateway (IB) Account for automated trading
-day trading strategies of US stocks is only possible above 25k $
-US ETFs like TQQQ, SPY, GLD, QQQ can not be bought by EU people :0 (
-Options of ETFs can be bought but not executed just in cash?
-So please find stocks only strategies excluding US ETFs or with a low amount inside this strategy

I signed up to Collective2 auto-trading with Interactive Brokers, executing one of their top-pick strategies. I believe the technology has tremendous promise but there are a number of areas where I feel there is a lot of maturing to do. The issues I faced were as follows:

1) I signed up during the market chaos of March 2020, losing quite a bit of money on a top pick strategy of theirs. I used auto trading with my Interactive Brokers account and feel that I suffered both from slippage as well as a lack of good instructions on how to configure the IB account in the first place.

2) Neither Collective nor the strategy provider supplied me with a list of permissions needed on the Interactive Brokers account to use the strategy. This resulted in a bunch of unplaced orders until I got my approvals and other forms completed and signed on IB.

3) I originally scaled the strategy to 50%, not realizing this was pointless as they traded 1 contract for most things. Again, I would expect some advice, written instructions to tell you NOT to scale when the strategy doesn't support it.

4) My real-world performance vs. the collective2 performance varied by about 3% (not in my favor as you can imagine) and when asking the strategy person they said it was due to slippage due to the Collective2 platform.

Granted these grievances have to be taken in context of a very volatile - chaotic market. The part that I do believe is down to the technology and the level of maturity of the service is better instructions to setup auto trading permissions specific to the strategy and faster technology to avoid slippage. Otherwise what's the point - a strategy provider can have a successful strategy that you can't get the benefit of. Trading futures in a volatile market - seconds really count.