You do not need a live (“real-money”) brokerage account to manage a trading strategy on Collective2. However, if you do have a live brokerage account at a compatible broker (such as Interactive Brokers, OptionsHouse, Gain Capital, or others), you can use our BrokerTransmit technology to “run your strategy” (submit buy and sell signals) by simply trading in your broker account, as you normally do.

If you don’t have a live broker account, or choose not to connect to us using BrokerTransmit, you can use C2 QuickTrade to enter your trades. C2 QuickTrade is a web-based trade-entry screen. If you’ve ever used an online broker, the experience will be similar.

Alternately, you can use one of our connectors to popular platforms such as TradeStation, NinjaTrader, MetaTrader, or MultiCharts.

Or you can use our API. Or you can use Seetu, our strategy-development and backtesting environment. In other words, whatever floats your boat.

With over 103,000 registered users, and hundreds of millions of dollars of automated transactions flowing through our platform each week, Collective2 is the world’s dominant open trading strategy platform.* If your strategy performs well at C2, chances are good that you will make money.

How much? That obviously depends on your strategy, and how well it performs, but we can give you some benchmarks. The highest-grossing strategy on C2 has earned over a half-million dollars. Other strategies hover around the $100,000 dollars revenue level. And quite a few good strategies cluster around the $20,000 to $30,000 level.

* “The world’s dominant open trading strategy platform” – based on analysis of available, published revenue and a user statistics for private companies. Also based on the completely objective opinion of our mothers.

You can charge subscribers any amount you like, but the “sweet spot” seems to be between the $49 and $199 monthly price point.

Another factor to consider is the amount of capital required to follow your strategy. When you begin a strategy on Collective2, you’ll be asked to choose its starting “Model Account” size. When choosing Model Account size, make sure you take into account the margin needed, position sizing, and typical drawdown. Strategies that require more than $50,000 may be less popular than those that can be followed with a smaller capital amount.

If you are an U.S. person, the short answer is: No, you do not need to register with any government agency, or pass any kind of test, or have a license in order to publish trading signals. However, you must be aware of certain restrictions. The most important restriction is this: You cannot provide individualized advice to clients. That is, you cannot offer different advice to different clients based on their individual financial situations.

If you are not a U.S. person, please check with a local attorney regarding the restrictions your government imposes upon you. Happily, we can report that Collective2 works with Trade Leaders all over the world, including the USA, Europe, the Middle East, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, North and South America, and Oceana.

Once you start signing up subscribers, we’ll take care of all the transaction processing. We pay Trade Leaders 50% of any subscriptions collected through Collective2. (Strategies certified as Trades-Own-Strategy (TOS) receive 60% payouts.) Charge whatever you’d like for access to your strategy.

Everything is included:

• Offer Autotrading to subscribers. Included.
• Broadcast signals via email, Instant Messenger, or cell phone. Included.
• Private forum for your subscribers. Included.

To “manage a strategy” here on Collective2, you’ll need to submit buy and sell signals. That means: when it’s time to buy something, you need to tell us, “Buy now.” When it’s time to sell, you’ll need to tell us, “Sell now.”

The easiest way to do this is to type your buy and sell signals directly into our web site using C2 QuickTrade. C2 QuickTrade is a web page that looks like an online broker. When you type in your trade, C2 “publishes” it simultaneously to all subscribers.

Alternately, if you have a live broker account at a C2-compatible broker, you can use BrokerTransmit technology, which automatically beams your trading activity into your C2 Model Account. (From there, all your subscribers will receive your published buy / sell instruction simultaneously.)

Or, you can explore advanced choices, which include our C2 API, email, platform connectors (NinjaTrader, MT4, TradeStation), or programming your strategy using our Seetu language (pronounced SEE-too).