Commodity Trading Advisor - CTA
What does it Mean? An individual or a firm, registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that receives compensation for giving people advice on options, futures and the actual trading of managed futures accounts. Registration for CTAs is done through the National Futures Association, a self-regulated organization responsible for reviewing and accepting registrations.
Investopedia Says… Registration for CTAs is required under the Commodity Exchange Act, which was passed in 1936 to better oversee the futures and options markets. Registration is required for any individual or firm profiting from the advice they give, unless they have not provided more than 15 persons with advice over the last year and they do not advertise themselves as a CTA. There is also no required registration if the individual or firm is a registered investment advisor with the SEC and only provides options and futures advice incidentally.
Note: Most CTA’s with experience earn around $ 250,000 a year, but only 30% of applicants pass the tests to earn this title.
I still hold forex is a special animal.
for someone who keeps overnight positions, doing that on futures market where there is five gap possibility per week. Yes I call that gambling.
Gee, I guess that’s why I hold ETF’s that I control my leverage with. Futures are 20:1 about, and forex is infinite as far as I’m concerned.
Yeah… it’s why I spoke about quality of C2’s vendors 
The fx vendor mixed ETFs and futures. In general futures have only over weekend gaps. Anyway, FX is the best market for beginners it reduces population of “traders” very fast.
Eu
Traders…LOL… definitely. That’s where they all went. It’s like a casino open 24/7.
I’m going to try something and report back to you. I’ll make a hypothetical $100,000 portfolio out of every system on my analyst page. There’s numerous and I think it’ll capture the average of all c2 systems. Hopefully the total losses don’t completely cancel each other out.
I have been doing something like this the last couple of weeks with what I thought were the best C2 systems (sorry, neither list nor criteria available for view)
Profits represent total system profits since their respective inceptions. (Each week is Sun-Sat basis)
Week 1 :
Starting profits of basket of "best" systems $514.366
Ending profits of basket of "best" systems $484,115
Week 2: (several severely underperforming systems removed and several more promising systems added and tried again)
NEW Starting profits of basket of "best" systems $472,866
Ending profits of basket of "best" systems $460,860
Week 3: (several severely underperforming systems removed and several more promising systems added and tried again)
NEW Starting profits of basket of "best" systems $622,160
Ending profits of basket of "best" systems $627,288 to date (Weds PM)
So far, not so good.
Open only 24/5, the week end I’m going to casino .LOL
Expect some more casualties after the moves in the last 48hrs. 150-200bps days in USDJPY, GBPUSD and others only to be completely reversed the next day. Incredible to watch and for anyone trying to trade it very nasty.
Losers this week
SlowFx (479.3%) (Forex)
Jubate Lanning (311.5%) (Futures)
Test (272.5%) ( (?) Test $145 per month)
OL 2007 FX (178.7%) (hehe "This is a "test" trading system not visible to the public. " Forex)
We stopped trading 5 AUG (138.4%) (Forex. There is very interesting history of name changes)
Test Net-Long GY System (100.3%) (Forex)
CCF EU/YM emini (92.6%) (futures)
ForEX (81.4%) (Forex)
GBP/JPY Technical Swings (81.4%) (Forex)
FOREX system 4 (62.1%) (Forex)
NeoStation (60.1%) (Forex)
test1 (53.2%) (Forex)
Deal Kinetics (45.6%) (Forex)
GBP/USD Long-Term Heaven (41.8%) (Forex)
FXNEWSWIZ (39.9%) (Forex)
Total killing ratio of one week by the market. 12 forex systems, 2 - futures, 1 - unknown, 0 - stocks.
lol
Eu
Beau, the bad thing about the Forex market is that it does lend itself to the 24/7 gambler casino let it ride fool. There are plenty of us that welcome that type of trader to the dance floor. I don’t think it is so much that systems can’t work on the Forex Market, it is just a breading ground that allows you to take bad trading habits to the extreme. Then you couple the fact that there are 24 hours in a Forex trading day and the good old fashioned indicators just don’t stand a chance. So you need to have money management, keep a handle on the leverage and an actual original idea. It can work; however the odds of being able to do all of the above and then share this knowledge with the general public is indeed a rare find. Let the suckers dance! 
All true, and very well put. I don’t know of any indicator besides interest rates and parity, maybe macro, that could possibly help. There is no infrastructure available to an individual to reasonably use these markets for what they are intended for.
If no one’s familiar with interest rate parity, or not using it for forex systems, I don’t give much hope to that system. I’ve yet to come across someone with a bloomberg terminal on here, which is the only source I can think of that would have these features available to them.
But you’re right. Who am I to stop people from trading?
This is good stuff, and I think we should keep tabs on this.
No one ever commented about where I posted in its own thread. But it was good for a month. I went straight down my analyst page and added 44 systems before C2 wouldn’t calculate it anymore. Basically it was annualizing at 200+% with 5% DD in the last month and a half or so. I think it was about 2.5% went to each system.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove, but I guess there are way more forex systems than stock systems, and people don’t pick systems randomly. I would say that it is more useful to compare the previous month’s top 10 forex systems, top 10 futures systems, and top 10 stock systems with respect to their performance in the present month.
Rick,
I would agree with you. "Let the suckers dance! " (sigh) In general I would prefer that stocks have less regulations to match forex with number of suckers.
Jules,
I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove
I’m not trying to prove anything. All stats about vendors is available at C2.
Current stats:
active systems - 658
Options - 35
Futures - 227
Forex - 178
Stocks - 215
Undefined - 3
As you can see forex systems are behind Futures/Stocks. Now you can look back at killing ratio stats for last week
Eu
hehe
Losers this quarter
Alpha Beta Fund (354.4%) (hehe "fund" Forex/futures)
FOREX 1 (165%) (forex)
HIGH ODDS FX (151.8%) (forex)
Forex Trader (146.2%) (forex)
SlowFx (143%) (forex)
Mercurius Fx (138.8%) (forex)
Test (133.4%) (unknown)
We stopped trading 5 AUG (124.6%) (forex)
GBP/JPY Technical Swings (118.6%) (forex)
MyNexTrade.com (116.3%) (forex/futures)
CCF EU/YM emini (115.5%) (futures)
OL 2007 FX (113.6%) (forex)
Co2 (100%) (options/futures)
Karan Doshi SPX500 Options (96.6%) (options)
ATForex (95.3%) (forex)
Forex - 11, futures - 4, options - 2, unknown -1, Stocks - 0
Well… I think you can have a fun by watching losers of <day/week/month/quarter) yourself
Eu
Indeed FX is a different animal, but meant to be traded. Either a person has to take the really big swings like the professionals, or scalp the snot out of it. After two years of trading FX, this is my conclusion.
I have developed my own system now, and am trying the larger swings. Controlling risk is very hard, but using only a mini-lot or two seems to be the key. Yes, I forgo the killer moves (usually), but hope to provide a great return with low risk.
I was sad to see that so few FX systems on C2 seemed legitimate. While the following does not help Matthew Klein in the short term, over the long haul it would certainly show significant gains for his (and all of our) bottom line. Here it is:
I think that NO system should be allowed on the grid until after 30 days and it has achieved a minimum performance score with W/L, APD, and sharpe. Matthew does not charge the developer his $88 until he "graduates"
This simple step would immediately elevate C2 out of the amateur realm as was mentioned in this thread.
Steve Theobald
"I have developed my own system now, and am trying the larger swings. Controlling risk is very hard, but using only a mini-lot or two seems to be the key. Yes, I forgo the killer moves (usually), but hope to provide a great return with low risk. "
The history here seems to be, FX system Y has a few good months. People get interested and even excited. People subscribe. system Y blows up in the course of 1-2 days.
FX system Z has a few good months. People get interested and even excited. People subscribe. system Z blows up in the course of 1-2 days.
Rinse. Repeat.
