Dear Steve,
let me know what VBA changes you have in mind, I will take care of that. I also added some features in the meantime, and could merge all into one update version, which we could put online here.
Thanks Steve! Check your P123 email, too!
Walter
Steve,
Thanks for the spreadsheet. If any of you have the original tutorials, please send me a copy. Thanks in advance.
My thoughts on the restrictions on the free members:
- Not sure P123 has the responsibility of protecting them from themselves. If yes, then keeping them from the high risk Trader category is probably sufficient. I thought the models were placed in the categories to highlight the risk.
- They are using P123 resources and should only have access to fee-based models.
- They should only have access to a forum dedicated to R2G model users, and designers can respond as necessary.
Earlier in this thread, there was a discussion about a designer adding additional models to the original 6 by paying a per model fee. That would be far simpler than forcing designers to register multiple times as a different user.
Jim
Jim - apparently they have been saved here (thanks Konstantin):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B31FuPkUo7TFQXpUd3dzUGtxQm8/view?usp=sharing
For free users - its not about saving them from themselves. Its about not letting free users affect (paying) P123 members ability to use low liquidity models.
Steve
I am only using R2G. Would I be able to downgrade to the free version and still keep the R2G’s I currently am subscribing to?
Hi Marco
I really heavily support all of Steve’s comments. Especially that for free R2G subscribers
- there should be limited to mid/large cap models (plus lower turnover models)
- there should be a maximum AuM per book
Furthermore
- Blog posts by free members in general boards should not be allowed, or at least somehow limited to one post per day/week (and potentially including a security feature) during the first 3 months so it is not too easy to spam boards
- There should be a special Newbie board for free subscribers
- Or some long-term, experienced users + P123 should be able to delete bad posts instantly (instead of just flagging)
“there should be a maximum AuM per book” - this idea hardly implementable until TRADE is used. One can just divide capital by 10/100/1000 or whatever and use these cap numbers on P123 and multiplying them accordingly for real trading. That is why I recommended Marco to remove any cap restrictions as not actually effective.
“One can just divide capital by 10/100/1000 …”
Konstantin - while what you say is true, I’m not sure how many people will try to get around the system. Most people with a certain amount of money to invest understand the value of their time and the cost of mistakes. One hour of their time is probably equivalent to one month’s P123 subscription (at the low end). How much time will it take to scale and manage all the positions. How many errors will be made? One error will cost substantially more than the P123 fee.
Yes there will be scrooges that want to manipulate the system, but I doubt there will be too many.
Steve
I joined P123 as a Designer to gain access to the full set of backtesting data. My goal was to build 3 or 4 trading systems for my own use. However, now that I’ll be able to get a free membership, why not just spend HALF of those dollars subbing to 3 or 4 RTG systems created by other long term members who are almost certainly better at designing mechanical trading systems than me. The remainder of my annual membership fees could be reinvested into those systems… how can I backtest the benefit of that? 
Chris - if that is what you want then why not start now? You can downgrade your membership to basic and save lots of money.
If you were to downgrade to the proposed “free” membership then you would be giving up your three or four ports you created yourself, have no ability to dabble in design (which most people like), and invest in black box (“trust me, I did a great design job”) models that you have no insight into. And if my recommendation were implemented, you would have access to one book capped at $100K starting capital.
The purpose of the free membership is to bring new people in painlessly so they have a chance to get used to P123. Some will stay with the free account, some may upgrade. If you want to take advantage of the free account so be it but you may not be doing yourself a service.
Steve
Steve, what I am worry about is an artificiality of some of the membership levels limitations, like capital, live books, ranking systems etc. I would prefer to see more meaningful segmentation more or less based on P123 costs to serve me, kind of simplified activity based costing. I do understand that often marketing brings companies to pricing not based on costs, but in my understanding the gap should not be to big not to loose a bunch of clients. Who can prove P123 is unpopular not due to unfavorable features/pricing of some membership levels?
Personally, I don’t understand, why investor with 1.000.000 should pay more than Investor with 10.000? Both are using the same services having the same membership level. Just because they CAN pay more? Is it fair? Isn’t it greed that so often killing investors on the market? Can this be the reason why P123 growth is slow?
The same to other limitations. Not naming exactly from my experience on the way from investor to designer so far, having Investor membership level, I am to often see message: You reached your membership level limit, please upgrade. And this is just start of the long way. And I constantly making efforts to BYPASS those limitations un-focusing from my way, not obeying limitations and upgrading my membership level. Not because I am not willing to pay, but because I am not sure if my effort are/will be successful. How much of investors will stay long enough to finally upgrade their membership level? Yes, P123 shows what can offer, but definitely not what the CLIENT can do.
To summarize. I am not sure if P123 should totally scrap membership levels system. I am not an insider and do not know all the situation. But current segmentation looks to me a little bit complicated and artificially unfair. I would like to see some simplification and real service based segmentation. I would like to pay for that I consume and get, not because I can. And yes, I can live with P123 as is. The question is P123 willing me to live this way and how much and how long other investors-possible-designers will live this way?
tkp, look at it another way:
say P123 has 10 members: 1 has $10M, 9 have $50K. The one member is running prices up/down for everyone else, which get fed up, and quit P123. Shouldn’t that 1 member pay a bit more ?
Yes, the way we do it is a bit artificial, but it’s all we can do.
Also, P123 is growing slowly (but steady) because we are too difficult for 99.9% of the people. The betterment’s and wealthfront’s are growing rapidly, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in VC money (just google robo-advisors, fintech startups, etc) because they are easy to use. But they are just asset allocators… buying ETFs and what not. We can do so much better. And we will .
Marco, in this scenario, yes, maybe should pay more. But isn’t this problem should be sorted out on a R2G subscription slots level? Is it really investor with $10M intention to pile into R2G enormous amount of $ and get hurt not only other subscribers but himself as well? Is it fool proof conception? Will additional $50 per month stop such an investor from doing what he intend (if so) to do? Will this save other subscribers? Can’t such an investor hide his real capital behind multiplication as I described? Is it an appropriate way to solve the problem? And what about situation, then one put 150-250K, others 50-90K?
I am not sure if I am right or wrong. I just sharing my experience hoping this can be useful for both P123 business and community. And I am very support slow and steady quality growth, think this should be supported with quality offer. Yes, P123 difficult for 99,9%, who said investment is easy? P123 and community should think hard how to serve 0,01% and stay profitable business. The same concept of balance like with investors above. Sometimes I feel like P123 still don’t know where to go. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try… you know, just don’t forget.
P.S. Just not to start another thread. Can we make more community? Can we star (make favorite) not only the whole thread but separate post as well? Would it be possible to show forum threads and posts mostly stared by members? Think this can help to pop-up and not to loose an ideas and valuable info. There are lot of buried into forum value already.
Steve - My point, albeit a sarcastic one, was that a member that isn’t publishing RTG models might choose to switch to save the $'s. I’ve had some amazing success designing my private models and have enjoyed all the benefits you mentioned. I would never give them up to save a few hundred dollars, but my point is that some might. Some will! For new users, this will weigh on the cost/benefit analysis on how to engage with P123. For me, the more I consider it, I see this as a perfect opportunity to launch a RTG model or three of my own as there will soon be many more new users looking for quality RTG models.
Marco, I do not want to sound “defeatist” but I believe that in terms of ease of use, P123 is at or about an optimal level. I think that 99.9% of people will go with those “asset gatherers” because they are lazy and are not willing to put any work into their investments, or because they think it is too complicated to even try to learn.
You have done a superb job at making the user interface and experience as easy as possible, it does not take long for a new user that has some understanding of what he is doing, to get used to the platform, create sims, etc. It might be possible to make it even easier, but I believe this would also attract more people that do not understand what they are doing, which could hurt themselves more easily, defeating the purpose.
I think P123 is amazing, but it is necessary to have a few years of experience in financial markets and some basic math and statistics skills to understand its potential, its limitations, how to use it and how to interpret results to avoid the typical problems of curvefitting, unrealistic simulations, execution impact, etc.
I believe now that R2G is a bit more “regulated” opening it up more with free subscriptions is good as more users are likely to sign up, and expand in numbers that way.
With regards to the other type of users (model developers prop and R2G), I believe there is certainly potential for increased revenues via increased services (International Data, daily sim, custom data, special requests, etc.)
“…but my point is that some might…”
Chris - As I said, some will. But I believe that enough restrictions are proposed that most won’t. I can’t speak for P123/Marco, but I believe that the company is best served by providing customers what they need, at a price they can afford. If they don’t need or want to design models, then why should they pay for the service? Does a basic membership serve a purpose, with 2 years of back-data or whatever the figure is? You can’t do any useful backtests with it. I can see that some may want a basic screener (only) with long-term backtest - that deserves its own price level.
“…Is it really investor with $10M intention to pile into R2G enormous amount of $ and get hurt not only other subscribers but himself as well? Is it fool proof conception?..”
KTP - That is the point of limiting the free P123 membership to largecap models. It is unlikely that the large investor will be able to hurt the long time P123 members. As for the guys with $10M to invest, I wouldn’t worry about them hurting themselves. With that kind of money, they’ve been around the block a few times. And if they do hurt themselves, I wouldn’t feel sorry for them 
Steve
Agreed that P123 can do much better than robo advisors. I have noticed that Quantopian has attracted a lot of hype, mainly through Meetup groups and competitions to launch a crowd-sourced hedge fund. Whatever happened to Alpha Chaser? If done right (easier said than done) that would be easier for mass consumption.
iavanti, I’m not referring to making p123 easy that way. It doesn’t matter if we make the entire interface drag & drop. Drag what? Drop it where? Or add a thousand tutorials. It’s like trying to make autoCAD easy. It can’t be done: you have to know the concepts. And on top of that, active trading is NOT healthy for most people. What i’m referring to is make p123 accessible to the ETF & Fund investor. We have the pieces but it’s still confusing. Think betterment, wealthfront, learnvest, but instead of asset allocation we do strategy allocation (liquid ones for now) by buying stocks. There’s no reason for investors to pay a management fee to those guys to do asset allocation (not that hard, just some questions and a bit of math) and pay another management fee to the etf. Sure, buying a basket of stocks instead of one ETF requires a certain amount of capital, so the very small investor is still cut out, but broker fees are only going lower. FolionFN lets you do fractional shares. It’s all moving towards this direction and we are the only ones with all the pieces. MotifInvesting is the closest since you buy the actual stocks in a “motif” for a flat fee. But a “motif” is not really a strategy, far from it. That’s what I think, but maybe I’m wrong and these robo-advisors really are revolutionary and deserve all the hype and P123 should just be happy with the small number of sophisticated investors.
Cheers
Steve and Konstantin,
Thanks a lot. It was accessible once I figured out how to use google drive.
Jim
Marco,
I am a big fan of this site but the documentation, particularly on the newer areas of the site, and outdated instruction manual could definitely be improved. This would make the site easier to learn even for someone that knows the concepts.
Respectfully,
Scott