CliK Enhances the Educational Process

Recently, Mark Grieco, VP Product Development of CliK, and I were able to ask Nikki Sitze, Instructor, to tell us about her history with trading platforms and to get her perspective on using CliK in the educational process.

Nikki Sitze began her career as a scientist, working in genetics. Later she went to work at Microsoft for 12 years. In April of 2015, Nikki became a student at Online Trading Academy (OTA) and later as student support in the Denver branch. However, it became evident to others that Nikki would make a great instructor.

Today, Nikki teaches Core Strategy and Forex classes. She says, “I cannot imagine my life without teaching now.”

Nikki has worked with quite a few platforms as a trader including FXCM, Oanda, IG, MetaTrader, TradeStation, thinkorswim, tastyworks, and now CliK as in integrated education, analysis and trading tool.

Some of the things Nikki liked about other trading platforms they were very customizable, she could save historical data, format levels, and create layouts.

When asked what she disliked about those platforms, the immediate answer was, “The older platforms are resource-intensive.” She is currently running a gaming system just to be able to use legacy platforms.

 For examples, when using some platforms, if she set up alerts on her desktop and then switched to her laptop to travel or teach, those alerts didn’t always carry over. “To see the alerts, I have to keep both computers running,” Nikki stated.

 When asked from a software perspective what happened with development on legacy platforms Nikki said, “Once the brokers or coders got to the point where a platform was at least marginally stable, all development stopped. The whole idea was, let’s get people in so they can trade, right? It’s working. Don’t touch it. Don’t mess it up.”

“The things that we want or need as traders, are not being added to legacy platforms. There are few exceptions such as indicators, apps, or something on top (and a lot of times those are being added by third parties rather than being intrinsic to the platform).”

We asked Nikki, “Having supported multiple asset classes on legacy platforms, do you find that CliK is better for classes?”

Nikki pointed out that using other platforms could take her four to five hours at a time to find five or six examples to use in class. She added, “Because OTA has targeted the tools sets, drawings objects, scanners, and watchlists in layouts around the education, with CliK, I can go through an entire watchlist and set up textbook trades for my Core Class in about an hour. That is going through about 100 charts in that hour.”

“I love the risk management in CliK,” Nikki said. She added that she teaches in her classes how the built-in risk management is so advanced versus any other platform out there. This allows users to adjust trade risk, set their position size, or the dollar risk amount.

Nikki stated, “Because CliK is web-based, and you don’t have to have a specific computer setup to run it. On CliK the information is stored in the cloud and it is accessible from anywhere. Brilliant!”

 “From a trader’s perspective, the features that are already in CliK are amazing. If OTA just stopped there, CliK is leaps and bounds better than any other platform. When teaching, I can take brand-new students coming out of the MTO with basics of probabilities and formations, and within two days have them set trades in a simulated market going into the next market session. That is so awesome.”

Nikki said, “I tell the students; OTA is just starting. See this little Beta tag here, think about where CliK can go from here.”

She concluded, “Knowing what CliK is capable of and where it is going, I look forward to where OTA is heading.”