Damn! You shouldn't be making this post just when I have decided to probably give Ninjatrader another chance. LOL. Just kidding.

Hi, Ron,



Thank you for your post. And thank you for that video. I learned a long ago to not have auto-connect on start-up, but I always open NT with workspaces. I'll try to close my workspace and open it after starting up NT instead.



Regarding hardware, I do have a good computer, but it's time for buying a new one as it's 6 years old and the battery is toasted.



Would you happen to have any advice on a good trading computer (laptop)?



At this point, I'm leaning towards just staying with NT8 and giving it one more chance. I really love the interface, ease of use and the nice charts. I think a big part of trading is to have familiary with the markets and what you're doing on a daily basis, and I am for sure familiar with NT. So that's a big argument for staying with it.



I loathe the PDF statements and not having an online performance center, though. But what can you do...



Thank you.

I have 4 machines, 3 desktops and 1 laptop, from https://www.tradingcomputers.com/ and I would never buy from any other place on earth. They got my back..... lifetime tech support. Machine built just for the markets or any demanding pursuit really. Made very well.

I've been trading on and off for a few years. Most of that time I've used MultiCharts. First version 12 and now 14. I can't ever remember a time that it crashed or froze up. I've tried NT8 several times and am now using it (free version) because there are a couple of price action indicators that are only available for NT8. I added a second CQG CME feed just for NT ($12/mo.). I don't trade with it because NT won't allow me to use other than their brokerage or IB.

So I run both MC and NT at the same time on the same machine. Most of the charts, DOM, T&S are on the MC instance and only 3 simple charts with a couple of indicators each on NT8. I've had no crashes but NT does get sluggish and freeze from time to time. When that happens, CPU load is below 50%, memory is about 4GB of the 16 available, net traffic is low, GPU load is low, and MC continues to work smoothly without skipping a beat. I've tried running NT alone without MC and it still freezes up from time to time. When using the crosshairs on a large window, they become very jerky or unresponsive.

Unfortunately for us MC users, most of the "cool kids" seem to use NT8 and most of the tools and indicators seem to be written for it. Yes, it is flashy and modern but MC blows it out of the water with respect to performance and the ability to process charts efficiently. I watched the video above about tips for using NT8 and my first thought was that if you have to go thru a manual startup process to keep it from having problems then there are issues with the way it has been built. BTW, I've got 40 years in software development, most of it in online or real time systems, so I know a bit about the subject.

To me NT seems to be like IBM in the old days. Their unofficial motto was: "We don't have to have an great product or even have a good product. We just need to have an adequate product and market the hell out of it."

I have been using Ninjatrader since 2009. I have had no major problem that could not be fixed using their support team in the same day. Last year i started to code some strategies and found it relatively easy to do in collaboration with their support and their excellent documentation.

I hear people talk about buying super duper platform to make it run smoothly. To be honest, i don't know what to think about it. I am using an old desktop computer with these specs:
Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G3250 @ 3.20GHz 3.20 GHz 8.00*Go

Nothing fancy but working percfectly for my needs.

I have also looked at Sierra chart and that was the worst platform i have seen in terms of design. I had the feeling i was returning to the DOS era. If you think you might need to get a good platform, i would look at IRT from Linnsoft. I have used it in the past and found it to be very solid and well done. In terms of volume profiling it beats them all since its inception. I would highly recommend it.

https://www.linnsoft.com/

I have 4 machines, 3 desktops and 1 laptop, from https://www.tradingcomputers.com/ and I would never buy from any other place on earth. They got my back..... lifetime tech support. Machine built just for the markets or any demanding pursuit really. Made very well.

Whatever you add to NT8 becomes an integral part of the platform and has the potential to have a great effect on it.

I'm not a coder just a hack and made some of my own indicators I use in my trading business. On one occasion I was working on something can't even remember what it was anymore just that it compiled fine so I thought it would work but when I tried to open the Indicator menu to add it to a chart it locked up NT8 in a loop it couldn't get out of. Had to terminate NT8. I removed that Indy I made from the compile list while NT8 was closed and never had that problem again.

My point is that no other platform let's you so intimately interact with it as NinjaTrader does. If the indicators aren't coded well they can mess with NT8 in strange ways and we end up blaming Ninia but it actually has nothing to do with it.

Ron


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