Thanks @brmicha for the input,

It's interesting you say that, the main reason I'm looking into NT broker is for the intra-day margin rates but not for the reason most are.

My main concern is being taken out of trades prematurely due to a spike in volatility etc
And to make sure that they are acting in a legitimate fashion and to investigate connection problems etc as there are many reports over at NT of major connection interruptions

I've been at this a long time and I know my stats well, I actually want to be trading with the smallest account size possible while being able to trade large size comparable to account capital if that makes sense, I know how much cash I need in my account to account for drawdown?

I want to free up capital for other things instead of it just sitting in an account for margin, with recent margin rates a lot higher than they used to be Intra-day margin sounds like a great idea if my trades are not being cut consistently as I tend to hold and press trades as much as I can given the environment on any given session so am susceptible to have trades cut with increased volatility as I'm regularly positioned already during the London session as I'm situated in the Asian time zone.
Something I'll have to be mindful of, kind of sounds fun in a way, spice things up a bit
If I go bust so be it, I'll add more capital

Cheers

Edit: Don't mean to sound cocky, I just have financial goals I'm attempting to achieve and accessing my current Margin will help me well along the way to achieving them.

Thanks @brmicha for the input,

It's interesting you say that, the main reason I'm looking into NT broker is for the intra-day margin rates but not for the reason most are.

My main concern is being taken out of trades prematurely due to a spike in volatility etc
And to make sure that they are acting in a legitimate fashion and to investigate connection problems etc as there are many reports over at NT of major connection interruptions

I've been at this a long time and I know my stats well, I actually want to be trading with the smallest account size possible while being able to trade large size comparable to account capital if that makes sense, I know how much cash I need in my account to account for drawdown?

I want to free up capital for other things instead of it just sitting in an account for margin, with recent margin rates a lot higher than they used to be Intra-day margin sounds like a great idea if my trades are not being cut consistently as I tend to hold and press trades as much as I can given the environment on any given session so am susceptible to have trades cut with increased volatility as I'm regularly positioned already during the London session as I'm situated in the Asian time zone.
Something I'll have to be mindful of, kind of sounds fun in a way, spice things up a bit
If I go bust so be it, I'll add more capital

Cheers

Edit: Don't mean to sound cocky, I just have financial goals I'm attempting to achieve and accessing my current Margin will help me well along the way to achieving them.

Thanks for the post @hyperscalper a wealth of information I really appreciate it,
It's awesome to hear you say that about NT I have never heard of such a report as yours

I'd like to ask you if you could please point me in the direction of how to push those ping times as hard as you are, I'm an old school price action trader but am super keen to learn about how to speed up data transmission times and order entry speed, is there any publically available info regarding how the layman can go about achieving this?

I appreciate any info at all you could provide me with.

Thanks again I really appreciate your post

You are not alone @jkarten there seem to be literally hundreds possibly thousands of users like yourself from what I hear
I have had many performance issues but for me I don't use any indicators accept EMA's, but I do have addons like

TickRefresh to counter the built in 250ms built in lag
BarTimerCounter to add a sound alert just prior to a tick bar closing
& Clicker for clicking directly on the chart to trade and although very light weight these are enough to freeze my workspace about every fifth time I draw a line or fib retracement where I have to Save then Close and Reopen my workspace, so I do understand your frustrations.

I hope you have a nice experience with Sierra

Cheers

Wow OK @TP10 I was unaware of that with Multicharts over the last year,

I purchased a lifetime license in 2009/10 and used it for a while but preferred NT, I began trading instruments back then that where not available to trade in NT so used the platform for a year or so before switching back and I remember the customer service was impeccable, I was reminded of that this week with the customer service I received, I will always have the platform to use if I want to or need to trade with brokers other than IB or NT and to use through IB for when NT goes down.
My initial contact was to ask if they'd update the sorry to say but ugly old fashion charting interface, I was honest with them as they pressed me multiple times as to why I was asking for them to upgrade the charting, I was not attempting to be but I was borderline rude and they gave me some of the best customer service I have ever received anywhere instead of just telling me to P&%$ off or ignoring me.

Thanks for the input and I'll be sure to keep it in mind

I use NinjaTrader platform and brokeraj, never had any issues with it and suport was great. With the new changes ninja did I had a log in problem witch was resolved fast by a remote suport guy that was very nice and made all that for me. I think is a reliable broker. I have the multibroker licence key with them and i have also good comissions and low spreads. Is ok imo

OK, well most traders would not entertain these suggestions. Most traders are sitting at their home offices, and thus a potentially huge amount of congesting Wide Area Network (WAN) traffic needs to flow from the market data source and exchange, to the trader's desk.

Firstly, traders are always "looking around" for the next instrument that might be more profitable, and often fail to specialize. Because they are considering, and are ready to trade, a range of instruments, that data has to travel to their desk.

Efficiency requires specialization, and that requires cutting down drastically on the number of market data feed elements needed to be watched/processed.

Most traders are looking for "high end" workstations to "crunch" all that data and manage many displays; and tend to neglect the WAN and ISP network facilities which are required to manage peak loading. How many times do you hear traders talk about "lag" ??? When "lag" is humanly perceivable; it's already huge.

If you are such a trader, and using NinjaTrader as your platform, you'll be running Windows, and you'll want to optimize your WAN networking as much as possible. This involves replacing the "stock" "congestion provider" (maybe it's CUBIC) for your Internet TCP with a much better one, currently named "CTCP" which handles WAN congestion more efficiently, thus improving overall throughput. (You can look up how to do that). Basically you want to tune your system as a Internet Gamer would want to do it, and there are guides for that.

But the key in our approach is to "Co-locate" the actual Dedicated Server and platform, NT8 NinjaTrader as physically close to the exchange as possible. This means for Futures traders, locating in Chicago or, at even higher cost, in Aurora itself so that your machine is very close to the data sources, and the orders portals if at all possible.

Choosing some degree of effective colocation means that the trading platform is very near, in network latencies, to the exchanges.

The role of your home office desktop thus becomes a "remote display" for all that is happening on your dedicated server. I say dedicated, because a cheaper virtual private server (aka VPS) is generally not good enough nor reliable enough.

A powerful data center server can be had for $150-$200 per month, on a self-managed basis. This could mean you'll need to learn how to be admin for your server, plus potentially creating 1 or 2 "virtual machines" in that same box; each of which could itself run an instance of NT8 NinjaTrader or your preferred platform; at no additional monthly cost. In my case, I get 3 "machines" for the price of one; since my monthly fee includes a license for 2 Hyper V VM instances as well.... very handy once you know how it works.

BUT LET'S FACE FACTS that very very few traders will choose this route, even if they understand potential advantages. They just don't have the specialist "mindset" to "take the plunge" into the world of very powerful datacenter based servers rather than the usual concept of "powerful desktop pc".

In my case, software on the server can take decisions when it "sees" a trigger opportunity; with a very short latency. That's gonna involve software features beyond the scope of this discussion; but obviously your latencies and the volumes of data you can process greatly increase when you choose to use a dedicated server.

Hope this helps; and Good Trading !
hyperscalper

OK, well most traders would not entertain these suggestions. Most traders are sitting at their home offices, and thus a potentially huge amount of congesting Wide Area Network (WAN) traffic needs to flow from the market data source and exchange, to the trader's desk.

Firstly, traders are always "looking around" for the next instrument that might be more profitable, and often fail to specialize. Because they are considering, and are ready to trade, a range of instruments, that data has to travel to their desk.

Efficiency requires specialization, and that requires cutting down drastically on the number of market data feed elements needed to be watched/processed.

Most traders are looking for "high end" workstations to "crunch" all that data and manage many displays; and tend to neglect the WAN and ISP network facilities which are required to manage peak loading. How many times do you hear traders talk about "lag" ??? When "lag" is humanly perceivable; it's already huge.

If you are such a trader, and using NinjaTrader as your platform, you'll be running Windows, and you'll want to optimize your WAN networking as much as possible. This involves replacing the "stock" "congestion provider" (maybe it's CUBIC) for your Internet TCP with a much better one, currently named "CTCP" which handles WAN congestion more efficiently, thus improving overall throughput. (You can look up how to do that). Basically you want to tune your system as a Internet Gamer would want to do it, and there are guides for that.

But the key in our approach is to "Co-locate" the actual Dedicated Server and platform, NT8 NinjaTrader as physically close to the exchange as possible. This means for Futures traders, locating in Chicago or, at even higher cost, in Aurora itself so that your machine is very close to the data sources, and the orders portals if at all possible.

Choosing some degree of effective colocation means that the trading platform is very near, in network latencies, to the exchanges.

The role of your home office desktop thus becomes a "remote display" for all that is happening on your dedicated server. I say dedicated, because a cheaper virtual private server (aka VPS) is generally not good enough nor reliable enough.

A powerful data center server can be had for $150-$200 per month, on a self-managed basis. This could mean you'll need to learn how to be admin for your server, plus potentially creating 1 or 2 "virtual machines" in that same box; each of which could itself run an instance of NT8 NinjaTrader or your preferred platform; at no additional monthly cost. In my case, I get 3 "machines" for the price of one; since my monthly fee includes a license for 2 Hyper V VM instances as well.... very handy once you know how it works.

BUT LET'S FACE FACTS that very very few traders will choose this route, even if they understand potential advantages. They just don't have the specialist "mindset" to "take the plunge" into the world of very powerful datacenter based servers rather than the usual concept of "powerful desktop pc".

In my case, software on the server can take decisions when it "sees" a trigger opportunity; with a very short latency. That's gonna involve software features beyond the scope of this discussion; but obviously your latencies and the volumes of data you can process greatly increase when you choose to use a dedicated server.

Hope this helps; and Good Trading !
hyperscalper

Thanks! It is very revealing that you only use ema's and a few other add-on and still have performance issues

Hi, I just wanted to add here, that trading futures when market crashes arrive is something very different than at other times. You may have various problems with all brokers. Liquidity dries up in those environments, which can cause the market to move much, much bigger than normal. If you have level 2 data, and you look at the DOM, you can see the total liquidity day to day, and that can allow you to see if you are trading a very, very below average liquidity market. Markets like this, most likely, can have margin increases mid day. The market can be shut down mid day, which is not your brokers fault. Slippage on trade entries and exits will be extremely high. This is also not your brokers fault. These types of markets are a nightmare if you are trying to trade a trading system and have consistent size wins and losses. Most people out there are just thinking how they can make a bunch of money, when, from my opinion, they should more be thinking about consistency of running a trading plan over time.