108 Tools to Grow your CTA Business

Updated on

Futures.

Attorney’s: (without comment, in the spirit of the old saying ‘if you don’t have anything good to say…)

Alston & Bird

Cummings Law

Crow & Cushing

Henderson Law

Ruddy Law Office

Schuyler, Roche, CrishamJeff Barclay

Sidley Austin – David Sawyier

IRA Custodians:

Advanta IRA  – Advanta IRA is composed of a group of elite self-directed IRA administrators serving clients nationwide.

Equity Trust – Equity Trust is a provider of Self-Directed IRAs and 401ks, with over 130,000 clients in all 50 states.

IRA Services – The IRA Services Trust Company has more than 30 years of experience offering custodial and administrative services in the self-directed IRA industry. Our account holders invest in “traditional” publicly-traded assets such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds, and a wide variety of alternative assets, including: real estate, precious metals, partnerships, limited liability companies, private stock, promissory notes, crowdfunding investments and more.

Kingdom Trust –  is an independent qualified custodian. The Kingdom Trust Company was established to provide flexible, innovative and cost effective custody solutions to the investment industry.

Midland IRA – Making the decision to self-direct your IRA is a big one. We understand how important it is for you to choose the right administrator. Here at Midland, we pride ourselves in our commitment to providing premier IRA administration for our clients.

Millenium Trust – is an industry leading custodian that helps Introducing Brokers, Commodity Trading Advisors, Futures Commission Merchants, Commodity Pool Operators, Broker/Dealers, and Registered Investment Advisors do more by providing expert IRA custody for futures trading accounts and managed futures products.

Pensco – Because holding alternative assets in retirement accounts requires special knowledge and handling, many broker dealers don’t offer alternatives as an option for IRAs, that’s where we come in.

Platforms:

Attain Portfolio Advisors –  is the registered Commodity Pool Operator and fund management arm of Attain Capital. Recently, APA, as we call it – has launched a new family of single manager alternative investment funds,  as well as a new website to go with it, www.Attainfunds.com.  The new family of Attain Funds contains five single manager funds across different alternative investment strategies: Trend Following, Short Term Trading, Relative Value, Agriculture, and Global Macro

The platform offers advisors and their investor’s ease of access to managers which have been pre-screened and vetted via Attain’s real-time due diligence process, with independent third party administration, separation of fund management and trading, and the full suite of Attain’s well regarded alternatives based research and education.

CAIS – Our platform provides you with turnkey access to a growing selection of in-demand funds and products. A broad menu of hedge funds across a wide range of strategies, including long/short equity, event-driven, merger arbitrage, credit/distressed, multi-strategy, global macro, CTA and fund of funds, in developed and emerging markets.

dbSelect –  is a platform for accessing strategies in FX, CTAs and other liquid trading strategies.

Lyxor – The Lyxor Managed Account Platform has created investment standards built on 4 key pillars: asset segregation, liquidity, transparency and risk management. Each managed account on the platform replicates a benchmark hedge fund that has been carefully selected by Lyxor.

RJO Oasis – At OASIS, our commodity brokers work with individual and institutional investors to define their ideal risk/reward profile and present clients to CTAs with the most potential to achieve their unique investment goals.

Typhon Access – is the operator of Hydra — a platform registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission — that allows qualified investors access CTA, FX, and Macro strategies. Hydra offers each strategy within a pooled vehicles.

Publications/Newsletters/Blogs/Websites/Education:

Attain’s Managed Futures Blog – Who provides the best educational, thought provoking, and random 80’s references about Managed Futures? Us, of course! With over 1,300 posts on the Managed Futures Blog, you can find any sub category you’re looking for, whether it be futures market commentary, Managed Futures regulation rule changes, other voices, or something we just found interesting, there’s enough content to keep you busy for as long as you desire.

CME – The basics of managed futures in just 16 pages, in this Managed futures whitepaper. Get the stats you need, and the ground level thinking for how the asset classes functions, and performs.

CME Managed Futures Podcasts – Looking for an alternative form a medium to get your managed futures education? CME have a long list of podcasts specifically dedicated to the managed futures industry. Guests include current CTAs, researchers, and investors & consultants sharing their thoughts on the current state of the managed futures. Podcasts run anywhere from a couple minutes up to 20, perfect for your train or car ride to the office.

CTA Intelligence – CTA Intelligence is a subscription-only monthly publication focused on the key issues and commercial opportunities for professionals working in the commodity trading advisor (CTA) space.

CTA Intelligence also features exclusive profiles of CTA managers and investors, as well as compliance updates and in-depth trend analysis.

Futures Magazine – Run by Editor-in-Chief, Dan Collins, Futures Magazine is a one stop shop for all things futures, hence the name. From Daily Market Analysis, to News, and Big picture commentary, it seems like there’s never a lack of content on this fan favorite site.

Hedgefund Intelligence – provides hedge fund news and data, offering a range of global products to the global hedge fund industry, its investors and related companies.

John Lothian News – John Lothian News (JLN) is the news division of John J. Lothian & Company, Inc. (JJLCO). The online media and financial services firm is majority owned by John J. Lothian, a futures industry veteran of 30 years, and minority owned by Jim Kharouf, a journalism veteran of more than 20 years. The firm is staffed by derivatives industry, journalism and technology professionals.

Opalesque – While they specifically focus on Hedge Fund News, they have a viewership interest in all alternative investments. Meaning, you’ll be able to find what’s up happening in the realm of Managed Futures.

Peter Brandt – Been in the Biz since 1976. Considered one of the greats when it comes to classic trading books. Included in the Top 30 most influential people in finance by Barry Ritholtz. We could all learn a thing or two from him.

Value Walk – ValueWalk combines Business, Politics, Technology, and Economics, with a splash of Hedge Funds and Managed Futures news thrown in. With 20+ “Gurus” on the site, there’s no doubt you’ll get a variety of information from unique sources.

Social Media:

A Big List of Alternative Investment Folks on Twitter

Market Data/Order Entry:

Barchart – Needs a quick update on how September Crude is doing? Barchart has every futures contract, front month and back months (up to a year out.) Barchart is one of the only technologies that offer hourly data of markets, but not available to download to an excel spreadsheet.

Commodity Systems Inc. – CSI is a low cost information vendor of summary world financial market data. Daily/data updates on thousands of time series are supplied via the Internet at the close of each business day or as the sun sets around the world.

CQG – Data, Charting, and Trading. “The industry’s highest performing and best valued market data, technical analysis, and order routing provider.”

Cunningham Trading Systems (CTS) – Trade Futures and Options how the Professionals do.

EUREX – publishes a wide range of robust data, covering everything from end-of-day settlements to intraday prices.

ESignal – online trading platform, offers valuable trading software & tools with real-time charts & quotes for trading stocks, futures, forex & options.

Finviz – An easy to use technology, Finviz gives you fast access to a majority of the futures markets. Our only issue with it, is they don’t use backadjusted data, or roll their contracts, so sometimes it appears like markets are making big moves when in reality, there’s a new front month contract.

Gate 39 Media – We specialize in providing financial marketing service solutions for the web. From web site development to marketing campaigns—and the technology to power them—we have a solution for you. Our clients include IB’s, CTAs, FCMs, and RIAs.

iBroker – Futures, Options, and Forex trading on the go. Built by traders, for traders, for any and all smartphone devices and tablets. Includes real time charts and indicators, price alerts, and real time quotes.

Quandl – It’s a one stop shop for just about any markets data you’re looking for (Futures or not). With a quick search, Quandl allows you to download data of any market that the internet has to offer

Trading Technologies (TT) – Trade the global derivatives markets from a single computer screen with TT’s award-winning professional futures trading software.

Tradestation – TradeStation offers online trading in stocks, options, futures, forex & ETFs, plus market analysis software, education and customer service.

Performance Reporting/Databases:

AlbourneVillage –  invites all investment managers to provide it with information and documents (“fund data”) about their funds by registering with MoatSpace.

BarclayHedge – Our Databases contain comprehensive and up-to-date information on Hedge FundsFund of Funds, and CTAs. Get daily updates of monthly returns, plus information on holdings, performance, assets, fees and more.

Compose/Wilshire – offers investment managers increased exposure and marketing power by making their key performance and relevant qualitative information available to users of Wilshire Compass.

Eurekahedge CTA database – The Eurekahedge CTA/Managed Futures Fund database is a database of commodity trading advisers and managed futures programs. Managed futures offer the potential for reduced portfolio volatility and profit earning in all economic environments and tend to have contrarian return properties to other hedge fund strategies.

Evestment – eVestment delivers insight and intelligence to the institutional investing community through a comprehensive, global database and cloud-based analytics technology. As institutional portfolios increasingly diversify holdings, a single source of data, analysis and reporting like that offered uniquely by eVestment becomes an essential foundation for efficient investing.

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