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Considering leaving Ninjatrader behind. Alternatives for futures trading? Tradovate?


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Considering leaving Ninjatrader behind. Alternatives for futures trading? Tradovate?

  #21 (permalink)
 
trendisyourfriend's Avatar
 trendisyourfriend 
Quebec Canada
Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: AMP/CQG
Trading: ES, NQ, YM
Frequency: Daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 4,527 since Oct 2009
Thanks Given: 4,171
Thanks Received: 6,018


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

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/

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  #22 (permalink)
 
Blash's Avatar
 Blash 
Chicago, IL
Legendary Market Chamois
 
Experience: None
Platform: NT8,NT7,TWS
Broker: InteractiveBrokers, S5T, IQFeed
Trading: The one I'm creating in the present....Index Futures mini/micro, ZF
Posts: 2,311 since Nov 2011
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LaissezFaire View Post
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.

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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  #23 (permalink)
 ZB23 
Atlanta Metro Area
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: Rithmic API
Broker: Ironbeam
Trading: Futures: CL spreads, IR outright.
Frequency: Never
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Posts: 144 since Feb 2017
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Blash View Post
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.

Interesting resource. I have bookmarked it. I will look to it when searching for a computer to performing Python backtesting.

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  #24 (permalink)
 whuffo 
Dallas, TX USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: Sierra Charts
Broker: AMP
Trading: ES
Posts: 41 since Jan 2018
Thanks Given: 10
Thanks Received: 27

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 a great product or even have a good product. We just need to have an adequate product and market the hell out of it."

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  #25 (permalink)
LaissezFaire
Oslo + Norway
 
Posts: 224 since May 2016
Thanks Given: 224
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whuffo View Post
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 think you pretty much nailed it.

And you're spot on with the NT issues. It seems like NT can be handled if done so properly, but is that really how a premium trading software should be? IMO, it should work smoothly out of the box without having to be a computer geek (no offense to anyone) in order to have it run sufficiently.

Interesting to hear your comparative notes on the two softwares.

I also checked my task manager when having issues and my system have been nowhere close to being "maxed out".

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  #26 (permalink)
LaissezFaire
Oslo + Norway
 
Posts: 224 since May 2016
Thanks Given: 224
Thanks Received: 104


trendisyourfriend View Post
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/

Interesting.

Thanks for the heads up on IRT. I've looked into it in the past and agree it seems like a fantastic piece of software. In fact, I had somewhat forgotten about it, but always thought it was something I should check out at some point especially if I were to change software. Your comments on Sierra is exactly how I felt myself checking it out, but I can't do anything but believe all the good reviews I'm reading.

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  #27 (permalink)
LaissezFaire
Oslo + Norway
 
Posts: 224 since May 2016
Thanks Given: 224
Thanks Received: 104


Blash View Post
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


Sent from my iPhone using futures.io

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out.

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  #28 (permalink)
 Dasani 
United States of America
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader
Trading: ES
Posts: 92 since Dec 2009
Thanks Given: 35
Thanks Received: 40

NT7 > NT8

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  #29 (permalink)
LaissezFaire
Oslo + Norway
 
Posts: 224 since May 2016
Thanks Given: 224
Thanks Received: 104

Okay. So, if we discard the actual software for a minute, I'm really missing an online performance center or even just a simple way to keep track of my net performance, i.e., log on to NT Brokerage portal and see my account equity and even just a simple P&L graph for the day, week, month, year.

I haven't seen anyone comment on this, so maybe it's not a bother for the rest of you?

The trade performance report in NT8 can be used, but to my knowledge it will be at best only be a close approximation as you're not able to include ALL fees in the performance center. NT support even said directly to me that I can't use this for accurate book-keeping and that I need to rely on the PDF statements for that.

CanadianFuturesTrader (I think he posts here) made a comparative review of Ninjatrader / Tradovate and he had good things to say about both, but regarding the account management part he simply said that NT feels a bit dated. I think that's an accurate description.

Just see what Tradovate lets you see by simply opening your platform. Net data real time and up to date. That's to be expected in this day and age, IMO:


Tradovate

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  #30 (permalink)
LaissezFaire
Oslo + Norway
 
Posts: 224 since May 2016
Thanks Given: 224
Thanks Received: 104


Doing some practice trades with Tradovate. Initial impression is that I much prefer trading from Ninja Chart Trader, but man, this performance report is beautiful.

Never mind the actual results. Just goofing around placing some trades left and right for testing.


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