I have a proposal for futures.io (formerly BMT) Elite Members:
1. To insure that we are using the best quality data that we can get our hands on to make our decisions, backtest our strategies and become better and more informed traders, futures.io (formerly BMT) purchases on behalf of those willing to contribute towards the cost of the acquisition the entire Futures and Index Trade Data from 12/1/1974 to 2/10/2014 from Tick Data dot com for USD16,500 ( (I don't care who we buy it from, just someone that has a solid tick data set that we can all get behind).
2. Similar to crowd funding, we establish a commitment goal number that we must hit for the purchase to occur. For instance, although I have no idea how many Elite Members there are, let's assume that there are 2,000. Using an assumed Elite base of 2,000 members, the purchase would then be made either at a percentage of Elites agreeing (for instance 80% of Elites) or a hard number of Elites agreeing (for instance 1,500 Elites). The $16,500 cost would then be spread amongst the number of Elites required to trigger the purchase (i.e., $16,500 / 1,500 Elites = $11/Elite Member).
3. The Elite that participated in the group buy would receive a new forum tag or badge next to their username that would indicate that they participated in the group buy. My thinking here is that it would be a way to just give a small shout out that you played a small part in making the forum better through your participation in the group data buy--and all members and guests can see that. It shows that you care.
4. After the data set was purchased, we would then tag the data so that it could not be spread around Big Mike alluded to doing this on some of the first ES data that he posted for Elite Members), plus we would only make the data available to futures.io (formerly BMT) users that either participated in the buy or contributed at a later date.
5. After the initial purchase, there would likely be additional group purchases of follow on annual updates, which at this time cost USD3,000 ( for daily updates for an entire year. Although this is just an idea, these data purchase updates (i.e., extending the available data from 2.10.2014 to 12.31.2014, 12.31.2015, etc) could be paid for by futures.io (formerly BMT) members that purchase access to the data after the initial buy date. The follow on purchases could also be set up with a certain number of members agreeing to purchase the data--in which case they would get another badge next to their username. However, your participation in any one purchase round would always grant you access to all of the purchased data--not just the amount of data that you purchased.
6. If Mike wanted to, he could offer some sort of discounted price to members that had participated in earlier rounds, but that would be at his discretion.
7. For those interested in Bid/Ask data (I'm not--at this point), the cost is USD43,500 ( for data from 1/4/2010 to 2/10/2014, with daily updates for one year being USD15,000. Obviously this is more money, but $43,500 / 1,500 Elites = $29/Elite Member, which is still less than lunch out with your signif.
8. It's okay if Mike makes some money off of this. This his site and he should be rewarded for the fact that we are all here together (if he so chooses). Therefore, in the assumed $16,500 / 1,500 Elites = $11/Elite Member example, if Mike wanted to make this number $15 or $20 or whatever to realize a little more value from the site, then I have I no problem with that if enough members agree to his price (i.e., simple market structure).
9. This data would then be posted via a thread that only participating members could access. One or more members would help out with converting the sourced data to acceptable data formats (i.e., NT7 tick import formatting, MC, etc). There would be a clean summary page pointing to all of the posted data.
10. The above proposal would make futures.io (formerly BMT) an even stronger asset to the our trading community.