Social Trading Review: Collective2

As I continue my series of Forex social trading reviews, I’m looking at a platform built to connect investors with top performing traders, Collective2. This service allows for traders to copy the trades of “trade leaders” directly to your personal brokerage account. The developers consistently mentioned throughout their website that the results being provided are all hypothetical. I appreciate this transparency, and I’ll dig into this aspect further in the trading results section of the review.

Founded by Matthew Klein, this privately held company is located in “Westchester County, about 30 miles outside New York City.” Collective2 LLC is a member of the National Futures Association, and the head developer previously founded TechPlanet, Inc. and Release Software Corporation.

Collective2 Review

The process of the Collective2 social trading network, is very similar to the others I’ve reviewed in this series. Traders are required to choose a trade leader (signal provider), select a broker, set a trade size, turn it on, monitor trades and finally share results if they are interested in doing so. Once the trade leader is selected, and the account is activated, then all of the trades taken by this signal provider will be automatically placed on your real Forex trading account.

Unlike other copy trade services like FX Junction, traders are required to register a new live brokerage account. This policy is more in line with CopyFX and Dupli Trade, but personally I prefer being able to utilize my current trading account. In certain cases, if you already have an account with one of the recommended brokerages, then it is possible to retroactively connect your account to C2 Autotrading, without opening a new one.

There are currently 17 compatible platforms, tradovate, interactive brokers, gain capital, tradepro, infinityfutures, garwood securities llc, agm markets, stage five trading corp, amp clearing, daniels trading, fxcm, halifax, ninjatrader, high ridge futures, cts, cqg, and rithmic platform.

Breakdown

• Type: Signal Copying
• Price: $49-$299/month
• Strategy: Multiple
• Timeframe: All
• Pairs: All

The pricing plans for the Collective2 service use a different model than most other social trading networks that rely heavily on specific commissions being taken per transaction. In this case, there are 4 different packages, and none of them have any transactional or commission markups. All of the accounts are essentially the same in that they offer auto trading, a self directed account, no asset management fees, and no other restrictions.

The main difference between the accounts, is how many strategies (signal providers) each trader is able to copy. The solo account provides one strategy, the standard account provides 3 strategies, the portfolio account provides 5 strategies and the portfolio plus account provides unlimited strategies. The single strategy costs $49 per month, 3 strategies costs $99 per month, 5 strategies costs $199 per month and unlimited strategies costs $299 per month.

If you do not sign up with one of these monthly packages, you can pay a subscription fee listed by the signal provider directly, but it’s generally better to utilize the original subscription model because it will save you my money.

Trading Results

The trading results section is listed as a leaderboard which can be filtered by trades, subscription fee, suggested minimum deposit, winning percentage, max drawdown and cumulative return. You can also specify the asset you would like your Collective2 strategy provider to trade, whether it be Forex, Future, Options or Stocks.

One of the aspects I want to shed more light on, is the suggested minimum deposit or suggested minimum capital filter. Each signal provider informs the community what the minimum amount of capital is suggested in order to follow a strategy. In most of the top rated accounts, this number ranges anywhere from 10,000 at the lowest, to 240,000 at the highest. This means, that traders need to have a pretty large initial deposit if they want to be successful with these strategies and this service in general.

I have no issues with the trading results themselves, as they all seem in line with normal accounts.

Conclusion

There are certainly aspects that I appreciate about the Collective2 service, but there is not enough here that’s going to push me over the edge and totally make me want to immerse myself in the world of social trading networks. The majority of the accounts are showing modest returns over long periods of time, but none of them are really pushing the boundaries of my imagination.

Please leave a comment with your experiences with this service, or just let me know what you think about social trading in general. Thank you for stopping by, and have a wonderful day.