What Is The Value of The Chartered Market Technician (CMT)?

By Galen Woods ‐ 5 min read

The Chartered Market Technician is a professional designation for market technical analysts. But what exactly is value of the Chartered Market Technician?

Whether you thought of enrolling in the Chartered Market Technician program or saw your associate’s name card with the acronym “CMT”, you must have wondered about the value of the Chartered Market Technician designation.

The Chartered Market Technician is a professional designation for practitioners of technical analysis.

To get the Chartered Market Technician designation, you have to:

• Pass three levels of assessment;
• Have three years of relevant experience; and
• Have a current CMT as your sponsor.

The value of the Chartered Market Technician has two aspects.

The first is its intrinsic value for developing your technical analysis skills.

The second is its professional value that will help you to prove yourself in the industry.

Intrinsic Value of the Chartered Market Technician

Syllabus of the Charter Market Technician Program

The clear advantage of enrolling in the Charter Market Technician program is having a structured approach to learning technical analysis.

The three levels of assessment cover definition, application, and integration of technical analysis concepts.

According to the CMT Association’s website, the content areas of the assessment include:

• Quantitative Financial Research and Trading
• Risk Management
• Applied Behavioural Finance
• Portfolio Management

The content areas are comprehensive and cover topics that a self-taught technical analyst might have overlooked.

The CMT Association has carefully selected study materials for the three levels. Even if you are not a member of the association, the list of reading assignments and prescribed books is a useful guide to the vast array of technical analysis books out there.

Market Technician Association Membership

To join the Chartered Market Technician program, you must first join the CMT Association as an affiliate member.

As a member, you will receive weekly technical analysis webcasts, access to a repository of technical information, and monthly publications on technical analysis. These are resources to keep you updated on the latest developments in the field of technical analysis.

From the structured and comprehensive approach, it is clear that CMT Association treats the field of technical analysis as a rigorous discipline. This attitude towards technical analysis is lacking in most academic institutions. Hence, the intrinsic learning value of the Chartered Market Technician program is clear.

Professional Value of the Chartered Market Technician

Professional recognition of the CMT designation

The Chartered Market Technician program achieved a milestone regarding its professional value when FINRA approved the exemption of Series 86 examination for applicants who have passed Levels 1 and 2 of the Chartered Market Technician program.

Series 86 forms part of the Research Analyst Qualification Examination, and anyone working as a research analyst for FINRA members must pass it.

Hence, being exempted from Series 86 is valuable for aspiring research analysts and puts Chartered Market Technicians on par with Chartered Financial Analysts (who are also eligible for Series 86 exemptions).

Career opportunities for Chartered Market Technicians

Another indicator of the professional value of the Chartered Market Technician is the number and profile of jobs that need a Chartered Market Technician. We searched for jobs in the USA that require or prefer a Chartered Market Technician on Indeed.com and found only two positions.

• Senior Investment Research Operations Analyst at Fidelity Investments
• Assistant Research Analyst at Randstad (taken off from the website)

The fact that the Chartered Market Technician is on the radar of one of the largest mutual fund companies in the world and a European MNC is encouraging.

However, the lack of opportunities is hardly motivating for job applicants looking to leverage their Chartered Market Technician designation.

(Update on 2 Feb 2014: We researched for jobs that prefer CMTs again and found three vacancies, including one offered by BlackRock, a multi-national fund manager with around 4 trillion AUM.)

Next, the profile of current Chartered Market Technicians will also give us a sense of the professional value of the Chartered Market Technician. Although CMT Association’s website listed the names and country of current Chartered Market Technicians, there is no information on their careers.

Hence, we surveyed the Linkedin profiles of 30 Chartered Market Technicians selected at random. (Random means the 5th result from each page of Google search results.)

Our key findings:

• Slightly less than half of the CMTs work for established MNCs. The others work for smaller boutique firms or national companies. A couple of them trade for themselves and offer freelance analysis services.
• Slightly more than half of the CMTs are in the USA. A significant minority is from India.
• 6 CMTs have other financial designations. The most common designation is the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).
• CMTs hold positions including trader, analyst, trainer, and salesperson.

Chartered Market Technicians are diverse and international. Despite being a relatively small group, it is a focused network of technical analysis professionals which includes senior members of their organization.

Cost of the Chartered Market Technician Program

Our discussion of the value of the Chartered Market Technician is not complete without taking into account how much it costs.

This table shows a breakdown of the program costs.

*The annual dues is $325. Given that the examinations are held twice a year, a candidate needs at least two years of membership to cover three examination dates.

The total program cost of $2,425 excludes the recurring annual dues of $325 if you want to hold the charter. The cost of study materials is also not included.

Conclusion - Why do you want to be a Chartered Market Technician?

The program cost is reasonable if you intend to extract its professional value, which means that CMT is relevant to your career. The recurring fee of $325 is a small fee for updating yourself with the latest development in your field.

However, if you intend to use the Chartered Market Technician program as a way to structure your learning, then paying for the program might not be necessary. Anyone can purchase the study materials and use them to guide your learning journey.

If you are enrolled in or enrolling in the Chartered Market Technician program, you should definitely take a look at our Book List for Chartered Market Technician.