Free capital markets and social equity

“I believe in sovereignty of the individual and in our need to build and rely upon both family and social networks in order to improve society and build ‘wealth’ that includes, in addition to material wealth, a healthy lifestyle and bountiful social capital.” ~ Bill Cara

  • Bill Cara's career

    Bill Cara, founder of CTA, is a highly regarded capital markets professional with over 35 years of managerial and entrepreneurial experience in the Canadian and Bahamas securities industries. A cum laude graduate of Waterloo Lutheran University, Waterloo, Ontario, and McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Bill organized and managed Qtrade Investor Ltd. of Vancouver, Canada, a nationally registered investment dealer that within a year appreciated in business value by over $100 million after a global bank invested $14 million. Qtrade has been rated by Report On Business as the number-one electronic broker in Canada for several years. He retains his original shares.

    Prior to that, he was co-founder with Chairman Peter Brown and Responsible Person for eastern Canada for Canarim/Canaccord Capital, Canada’s largest independent broker-dealer member of the Toronto Stock Exchange. During that time he hired and trained a professional staff of 80 and was responsible for the company’s total brokerage operation from the penthouse of the Toronto Stock Exchange.

    During the 1980’s, he participated as lead manager in the creation and selling of almost $100 million in debt and equity securities for Canadian and US start-up corporations, the most notable being Star Data, Genesis Microchip, and Environmental Technologies, an undertaking that created shareholder values of almost $1 billion, and resulted in hundreds of jobs in Toronto and Silicon Valley, California. In the 1990’s, at the request of the Prime Minister of The Bahamas, he was responsible for about $100 million of direct investment into the local economy, including the re-development of the British Colonial Hilton Hotel in Nassau.

    In April 2004, Bill began his Cara Community blog, in which he gives daily trading and economic commentary, and hosts a lively discourse. Soon afterward, he was named Forbes magazine “Favorite Trading Blog”, and has received accolades from Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal. He is now widely known as an analyst and commentator of current global financial issues and his popular website is routinely visited by over 100,000 readers from 140 countries around the world.


    He states, “The blog’s purpose is to demystify the capital markets and help return control of those financial assets to the people who own them. People need accurate information and appropriate tools and techniques.” Accordingly, he is known as a populist, but refers to himself as a Free Market Patriot.

    Bill established CTA as a professional service that manages accounts held by a global clientele in electronic brokerages. His firm offers a non-traditional portfolio management model providing discretionary trading services that optimize returns according to individual risk profiles, while allowing clients to retain complete control of their accounts.

    Author of the recently published Lessons from the Trader Wizard, Bill is preparing two more companion volumes. He lives full-time in Nassau, The Bahamas, having recently moved from Toronto, Canada.

  • CTA succession plan

    Our Succession Plan will soon be available for viewing.
    In recognition of the importance of succession planning, we formed a workgroup to develop ours. It has progressed through a series of drafts and is currently being reviewed and refined. While our Succession Plan must meet CTA's stringent requirements for the smooth continuance of effective leadership, we place equal importance on the role of our Plan in maintaining the highest standards of risk management for our clients.

    Of particular relevance to our clients, our succesion plan will, when complete:

    • Identify our potential future leaders -- key people who will "step up"
    • Assure that we currently have the right people in place
    • Make our internal operating structure more transparent

    The preparation of our succession plan is helping to develop our company by:

    • Identifying the skills needed by potential successors
    • Determining whether skills development is needed among our successors
    • Facilitating the recruitment and placement of qualified candidates

    We expect to publish our succession plan on this website in 2009.