I do have the Cool Trader Pro platform and although CTP has some good auto trading features there are several important features missing that make the program less effective than other auto trading programs like TradeStation, Sierra Chart, MultiCharts, NinjaTrader, Trade Navigator, etc while also being more expensive than its competitors. This product needs to adapt or it will be left behind. Some of the major weaknesses in the CTP software are:
1. Limited to trading only one long strategy and one short strategy from the same software installation - If you want to trade more than one long or short strategy simultaneously you have to pay more money to get a second copy of the software and it should be run on a second computer. This limitation might have been acceptable in the early 2000's, but in 2014 this is a rather antiquated restriction. The other auto trading platforms mentioned above don't have this restriction and some of the newer but less powerful auto traders that have become available in the last 6 months support 3 separate strategies that can be run simultaneously from the same installation. The main reason for this is to diversify your auto trading with different trading styles and time frames and take advantage of different types of market behavior. This is a sound approach to auto trading and support for this in a single installation of software is the norm with other auto traders now. CTP definitely needs to catch up in this area.
2. No OR function or IF THEN ELSE functions are supported for creating flexible trading rules - You can only use AND functions to create trading rules and this makes trading strategies far less flexible than those that can be created with other auto trading software. Not having an OR function in the CTP software prevents trades being entered or exited based on more than one type of market condition. This means you'll often miss profitable trades because your generic "one-size-fits-all" trade rules won't get triggered by a specific market condition (i.e. uptrend, downtrend, choppy). A more flexible and profitable approach can be achieved when you can use an OR function in your trade rules to more accurately account for various market conditions for entering and exiting trades. An OR function is invaluable for rules creation and directly has an impact on profit performance. This function (along with the IF THEN ELSE function) is a standard feature in most other auto trading platforms. It's a sorely missing feature in the CTP software and needs to be added as soon as possible.
3. No scripting language is available to create custom indicators/functions and flexible rules for strategy creation - Most other auto traders have adopted some form of a scripting language similar to EasyLanguage in TradeStation or ThinkScript (ThinkOrSwim). These scripting languages are fairly intuitive and don't take too long to learn how to create rules and custom indicators. But most important is how flexible they are in creating almost any set of indicators and trading rules you desire without having to be a hard-core programmer. CTP on the other hand, supports rule creation through a list of predefined indicators that can be combined with logical operators like greater than, less than, or equal to create rules. The problem is indicators for daily time frames have fixed parameter values that can't be changed so if an indicator doesn't have the numerical settings you want you're out of luck. This is a very clumsy way to support indicator use since the CTP software must provide an indicator entry for every parameter change (e.g. an entry for a 20 period Moving Average and a separate entry for a 50 period moving average). Contrast this method with that of the other auto trading platforms mentioned which provide a single entry for each indicator with the ability to change the indicator parameters to any value the user wants. The difference in flexibility that the end user has with indicators in the other trading platforms is enormous and CTP needs to offer this same flexibility.
4. An incomplete list of technical indicators - There are a large number of basic technical indicators and other low level functions that aren't available for rule creation in CTP when compared to what's supported in other charting/auto trading platforms. Missing from the list of CTP function capabilities are basic arithmetic functions like add, subtract, multiply, divide, sum, totalsum, absolute value, highest, lowest, etc. Also missing are statistical functions like correlation, linear regression, standard deviation, etc. which is ironic since CTP promotes a Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) method of trading which relies on statistically-based mean reversion of market prices. The aforementioned missing functions that can be found in most other auto trading platforms can definitely improve the flexibility of the trading strategies that can be created and consequently the profit performance of an auto trader. CTP needs to expand their list of supported indicators to be able to offer the same types of better trading strategies that can be created in other platforms. Most of CTP's technical indicators seem to be supplied from a third party called FM Labs and that may be part of the problem. FM Labs supports far fewer indicators than any of previously mentioned platforms. And as far as fundamental indicators are concerned, it's unclear who the source(s) is for CTP and support staff either can't or won't tell you. This means if there's a discrepancy between the value of a CTP fundamental indicator and some other source there's no clear way to resolve the issue.
5. Limited historical data available that's needed for certain indicators or trading rules on daily and intraday time frames - For example in CTP you only have a couple of days of intraday data available so using something like a basic 50 period moving average with one hour bars isn't possible. Look back periods for end of day indicators normally don't exceed about 2 or 3 days ago. This limits the type of trading rules that can be created and is a major restriction for users that need historical data of 30 days or more for the indicators they might want to use. Most other auto trading platforms provide at least a year of daily historical data (often much more) and at least 3 months of intraday data (often down to the tick). Not having this capability in CTP means there are a whole class of indicators that aren't available to users to create rules. This is another area where the CTP platform needs to make major improvements.
6. No ability to manage individual entries and exits on a basket of securities - With the current CTP platform, you're forced to use a shotgun approach of applying the same set of entry and exit rules to every stock with no ability to also add custom tailored rules for individual stocks. For example you may have a set of general entry/exit rules that you want to apply to all stocks for buying and selling but also have specific entry or exit price rules for each stock. This makes sense since on any given day (or week, month) there's often a rotation between which stocks are strong and which ones are weak. You might, for example, in addition to having a set of general rules to enter certain stocks also have a stock specific rule. For example only enter IBM as long as it's price is less that a certain value whereas you might not want to have a similar price limit restriction on other stocks. By being able to combine generic entry/exit rules for stocks along with individual stock entries/exit triggers and profit targets, one can improve profitability on individual stocks (and consequently the overall portfolio) as desired. It's something that other auto trading platforms allow and something that CTP should also support.
7. Poor documentation for their indicators and other features - Looking at their indicator list, you'll see it's a collection of some well known indicators that have been used for decades (Moving Average, MACD, RSI, Average True Range, etc.) combined with some non-standard indicators - presumably added as individual requests. For several of the well known indicators you'll either see a very brief verbal description for the indicator or the following message
"Standard indicators documented in CoolTrade, as their are already many sources on the internet. Descriptions of most common indicators can be found by entering 'TECHNICAL INDICATORS' in your favorite search engine". So it's often left to the user to figure out how CTP has implemented a particular indicator by searching the web for a technical definition and then verifying if the associated CTP indicator values make sense. This kind of indicator support is reminiscent of the less-than-useful help features often found in Windows applications. While you can often figure out the formula and general functionality of a CTP indicator with prior knowledge or some online research and CTP troubleshooting, there are cases where you won't find useful info online for a CTP indicator based on the CTP indicator's name. For the most part, CTP has sidestepped most of the indicator support and left it to the end user to figure out. You're left with a sense that good documentation for this product wasn't much of a priority by CTP developers. All it would take is some time spent by a technical writer and perhaps a market technician to sit down and go through the CTP indicator list to give each indicator a proper verbal description, the mathematical formula used, and an example of how the indicator might be used in the CTP software. This is exactly what most of the previously mentioned auto traders do in their documentation. Take for example a cheaper auto trading platform like Trade Navigator where you'll see firsthand that indicator documentation is taken seriously by viewing their Functions and Indicator manuals:
www.tradenavigator.com/manuals.php
This is the kind of documentation quality that should be found in the CTP platform especially considering the cost of the product.
8. No back testing capabilities are available in CTP - With the access to historical data available and the computational capabilities of modern PCs and laptops, there's no reason why CTP shouldn't support that kind of capability. Proper strategy creation should involve both back testing with historical data and forward testing with current data. This method cuts down the time needed in finding strategies that have a good chance of working over different market conditions. This is another area where CTP needs to catch up to its competitors (Sierra Chart, TradeStation, Trade Navigator, Multicharts, etc.) and become more useful.
9. Trade management problems when connected to a broker data feed - Several CTP users I know, including myself, have on occasion had potentially winning trades become losing trades with CTP because of unintentional disconnections CTP has with the broker. The problem starts after CTP has initiated a trade and then some time later loses the connection to the broker (either because of a CTP crash or a loss of communication to the broker data feed). After CTP eventually reconnects with the broker, the original price that was recorded by CTP when the trade was originally opened, is corrupted and it's value has changed. When this happens, it's possible for CTP to close a trade at a loss thinking it's actually made a profit due to the difference between the current market price after reconnection versus the corrupted opening price it's now using as a reference. I've had other platforms (NinjaTrader, Trade Navigator) lose connections with broker data feeds before but they never corrupt any data that's been previously logged. The record for open trades should not in any way be modified by a disconnection with a broker data feed. Why this kind of thing happens with the CTP software suggests there's something fundamentally wrong with CTP's error correction capabilities (with respect to disconnects) that needs to be fixed.
10. Old fashioned GUI - Several other reviews I've come across on the web commented on the fact that the CTP user interface looks and operates like an old Windows Operating System. After reflecting on it, it's true in some respects. For example the main window for CTP can't be resized - it's fixed with no scroll bar feature which can make it annoying for users with certain computer screen sizes. Also there is a small number of strategies that can be viewed at any one time using their strategy list. If you have several different versions of strategies that you want to keep and access you have to store most of them in files with only a handful of them being able to be accessed from the strategy list menu. If you want to add a new strategy to your current list, you have overwrite a strategy that's already in the list - not a major problem (you can make a backup copy) but annoying nonetheless and reminiscent of some of the GUI functionality of old Windows operating systems.
11. Limited technical support - The CTP customer and technical support has been fine for issues involving CTP installation, basic setup and troubleshooting and I've never had any problems in those areas. However in cases where I've inquired about some of the technical operation of the software, it's been a different story. There have been instances in which CTP technical support has not been able (or willing) to provide answers to technical questions about their own product that other support staff of similar products have no problem answering. For example I've asked similar or more complex questions of ThinkOrSwim support staff and although they may not have always provided an immediate answer, within a few days I always get a satisfactory answer. I haven't always had that experience with CTP and would hope that their staff would better recognize how important it is to know their product thoroughly and also be more transparent about how their product works.
12. Slow to innovate - After looking at several years of CTP forum posts regarding feature requests from users that have yet to be implemented by CTP, it's clear there's a problem with their ability to make improvements to their platform in a timely manner. It's not that users haven't provided them with areas to work on in addition to the ones listed above. Either they aren't adequately staffed on the development side to make steady and continuous improvements in their platform or they don't see it as a high priority to do so. Either way it's not a good sign, except for their competitors. Contrast this with the steady improvements you see in the ThinkOrSwim platform or Sierra Chart. TOS generally updates their platform about once a month which is generally a combination of the occasional bug fixes as well as new indicators and other features. Their list of studies has grown extensively over the years and is exactly what CTP should offer but doesn't, even though CTP costs $3500 and TOS is free to use. And with Sierra Chart by looking at their forum posts, it's clear they generally respond to user requests for features and indicators quickly and implement most requests in a timely manner. CTP developers could learn a lot from the way these 2 platforms support their customers with new features.
Despite this list of shortcomings that the software currently has, this platform still has the potential to be a very good product if the developers would show enough desire in their product (and/or provide the development resources) to fix these problems. The developers need to demonstrate they take their responsibilities for the quality of their product as seriously as their competing platforms do. For most people the CTP software isn't worth the money in its current form. Auto trading programs are continuing to get easier to use and new products have continued to appear on the market this year. The question is will CTP continue to evolve and keep up or will it become the Windows 95 of auto traders in a Windows 8 world.
