Hi ppl, i am an FX Trader in a SWF, and hve completed the 3 levels for the CFA exam. was thinking of adding tech analysis to my skill sets…anybody s got idea of CFTe program and whether its better than the CMT…
This has been discussed over and over here. You might try a search – but then again you may not find anything since it hasn’t come up for awhile. The general consensus is that neither designation is very useful. If you work on the fundamentally based side of the business, you probably don’t hold a lot of faith in technicals. If you work as a technical trader (or just trader in general) you probably don’t need a designation. And if you are trying to break into trading, a designation will not help you. So what’s the point? Just my opinion.
I think the consensus was that the letters won’t help all that much, but - assuming you think that technical analysis has some validity (I do), the material in the CMT could be useful. I gather that the CMT isn’t as brutal a process as the CFA, which is nice.
I have the CMT designation from the Market Technician’s Association. My impression is that the MTA has more “currency” than IFTA (at least in North America): published analysts, NYSE/NASD recognition, etc. The CMT is not as brutal as the CFA, and as a trader, you’ll likely find the material interesting and relevant. Good luck!
I just got all my books for the CMT Level 1 in October. So excited! With access to the Market Technician’s Association site, I just watched a video by Prof. Andrew Lo of MIT. Interesting connections between behavioral finance, quantitative finance, and technical analysis.
How much does it cost to do this? I don’t care so much about the designation, but I’d like to learn the material, as long as it’s laid out in a logical format.
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > How much does it cost to do this? I don’t care so > much about the designation, but I’d like to learn > the material, as long as it’s laid out in a > logical format. The books are pretty cheap and are well structured. They are books that most people in the industry would at least find interesting (can’t remember the titles off the top of my head), if not helpful. I have them all sitting at home in the stack of the other 50 finance books that I intend to read sometime 
I agree with the idea that it’s worth reading and thinking about the books, but I, too, would save my money and skip the designation. Thinking about it since this morning, I would probably amend my statement that fundamental analysts don’t hold a lot of faith in technicals. A lot of people I work with on the sell-side look at technicals all the time, they just don’t like to admit it (I also wonder if they really know what they are looking at). Others, however, would laugh at someone if they said they were basing a decision on support or resistance, etc.
bchadwick, 1. Here’s the link to all the recommended books for all three levels. http://www.invest-store.com/mta/ Cost of all books for all levels will run in the high hundreds. 2. Exam fees include: Annual dues of $300.00. CMT Program registration fee: $250.00 US CMT Exam Level 1 fee: $250.00 US CMT Exam Level 2 Exam fee: $450.00 US CMT Exam Level 3 Exam fee: $450.00 US (you choose exam or paper for J. of Tech. Anal.) CMT Exam Level 3 Paper fee: $400.00 US 3. The estimated amount of time will be roughly: CMT Exam Level 1 – 100 hours CMT Exam Level 2 – 140 hours CMT Exam Level 3 – 160 hours 4. Major benefit of membership if you aren’t pursuing the CMT designation itself is that you get access to new and archived J. of Tech. Analysis (in PDF format) and streaming videos. I am pursuing the designation because it provides a tangible goal and structure (time pressure is useful for efficient study) to my studies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- bromion, In Prof. Lo’s talk, he recalls a presentation he gave as a fresh PhD to a roomful of finance academics. After presenting results concerning autocorrelation in the financial markets and how this suggests the efficient market hypothesis may be a flawed/obsolete paradigm, the host of the event, a prominent finance professor (who was avid, or shall we say “rabid”, EMH proponent) proclaimed to the entire audience that Lo had made a coding error! Upshot: Members of the audience tested and confirmed Lo’s results. So funny, a quick/dirty way to discredit someone for a short time is to simply say that they made a programming error. I would recommend googling “adaptive markets hypothesis.” Links to Lo’s homepage and just some fascinating stuff.