CTP-O, Breathing new life into an old plan and some self justifications.

My investigation into just one more training program has spurred me on in my new and improved CTP plan. I may not necessarily use options as quite a few ETFs do not offer options but I can certainly take advantage of margin in my account.

I think I will forego trying to get maximum profits out of my TFSA for now as it is chock full of long option trades right now. I actually sold off two today for some modest gains, both over the recommended sell price due to timing and limit orders and not worrying if the price dropped off of my order.

Anyway, nothing in the program was new, nothing was proprietary other than the written or video recording and nothing was rocket science. In fact, nothing was any different than many of the little things that I have been postulating at some point over the last two years.


OK, enough of what looks sort of like me blowing my own horn. My intention is to point out, for my own justification, the many reasons why I should not continue with the program and therefore ask for my money back. If it teaches nothing new to me than it is not worth anything to me.


Following is a list of topics that the program touched upon:


- P&F charting
Been there, done that. Lots of validity and use.

- Bullish Percent indices
This I never wrote about that I can recall as I never nailed down a solid use for them outside of general market sentiment indication. High values indicate an overbought index or market and low values oversold. Overbought is a good time to be selling and over sold is a good time to be buying...like I said, it's not rocket science. I let my Stockcharts.com subscription expire and left it long enough that my chart lists are gone but I even had a percent bullish list of indicators.


- Use of options touched upon
Well, options are my new stocks anyway and the instructor (developer) admitted to not being an option pro.


- relative strength studies
I could find no easy way to print these so they never made it to my blog, they were mentioned though. One study that I worked on for the 20 week sma envelope relied on these to compare stocks and ETFs within a sector or across sectors to determine which one to actively trade long. This program uses then in the same fashion.


- sector targeting through ETF trading
Using ETFs instead of stocks is a basic premise for diversification, nothing new here either.

- stochastics (I use Williams %R but it amounts to the same thing)
This is a rehash of an older oscillating indicator, almost any price relative indicator would work here. I like Williams %R as it is one line and on Esignal it is nicely coloured red and green to indicate the overbought and oversold points. This is used as a trigger during certain trending periods to optimise entries...sounds familiar.

- risk management
No brainer here, that is one of the topics that I beat to death the most. Mine has worked very well for two years and it is similar to almost any decent risk management setup out there.

- position sizing, scaling in and out
Obviously I have worked out position sizing to suit my account, that is what is talked about in the program and it follows very close to what I use for both options and stock. The scaling is a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 system that is particular to the method used for trade entry and exit.

The scaling is a bit unique, or I have not tried it in exactly the same manner but it is supposed to be used by many pros, so, again, not a proprietary system.

In fact the only thing that can be considered proprietary in any trading plan is one of two things:

1) an algorithm designed to give signals and triggers
2) anything that can be kept secret

Any signal is based on a formula and is likely subject to some sort of idea copy writing but there are so many ways of producing a similar signal that are already in the public domain that it hardly matters.