Well, I have had a bad week with NT7, I won't relive the full story, only to say that I have several installs and they all have one problem or another, then I made a fateful 'upgrade' to NT7-16 and broke my main NT. NT715 had been crashing all week, so I was desperate for a fix to some of the problems (one of which has been present since Beta 11) Then a fresh install on NT7 16 on an old laptop produced a whole new bunch of problems, including very frequent crashing.
So I have given up on using NT7 for now, it seems that it is getting worse each release, not better. I'm back on NT 6.5 now and its a relief although it has some problem also of crashing when the DOM is up. Support say to delete the database to fix it, but I had already done that before I emailed them and the issue continues.
Anyway I did get a look at some of the new features of NT7 and here is a list of things I like / don't like / would like.
First up I don't like,
Bugs (ok its Beta so to be expected, but it seems to get worse each release and also NT 6.5 is also buggy and it isn't beta).
I don't like the scaling ability on the chart, because after you change the scale you can no longer scroll the charts, they dissapear. NT 6.5 is much better in that regard.
I don't like the way when you click on a chart the indicators keep selecting. I don't know what the point is and its very annoying when trying to add and remove support lines, fibs etc. It slows things down alot and is clumsy.
The 'plain' selection of indicators. There is nothing there to set NT apart to make it any better, for that we have to rely on the kindness of other people or buy commercial stuff. Things like Market Profiles and Delta should be standard in such an 'advanced' package. The indicators are all very old.
I do like,
I think the candles draw nicer in NT7, especially when they are very small.
The optimizer uses all CPU threads, but only during the number crunching phase, still better than NT 6.5 though. Much less crashing during optimization now (but still some).
What I would like to see added (to any charting package).
Frist up, stability and speed. That should go without saying. Its a bad start to the trading day when NT blows up in your face (again).
I'de like to see a B/E button on the DOM and chart trader, so I can B/E anytime I need to on a trade.
I'de like to see a Stop Order and Stop Limit order trail option, so I can trail the price, by say 5 ticks and when it turns back it enters the order.
I'de like to see the ability to order more than one instrument when placing an order (eg for hedging or playing correlations).
I'de like the ability to setup my workspace and lock it all together, with no gaps and small margins, and maybe be able to enlarge each chart quickly by a double click and for that workspace not to dissapear each time NT crashes.
The ability to download replay days in a range, instead of having to sit there and click click click for hours on end.
Thats off the top of my head !
Sometime I wonder if the NT guys actually use their own software to trade or not.
Any other ideas ?
The following user says Thank You to webart for this post:
webart,
Sorry for the frustration you have had this past week. I am happy to escalate your case within my support team and try to get you back in the game with NT7, just send an email to our support attention to “RayD”.
Thanks for putting out these comments, I would like to address a few of the points you raised.
- You can disable selection of indicators and data series on the chart ŕ Under chart properties, set “Allow the selection or drag/drop…” to false
- We will expand our existing 100+ indicator base in the future but as you clearly pointed out, we do rely on our extensive 3rd party developer and development community
- We do have a lot of requests for allowing a user-defined range to download MR files and this is on our longer term list to address, the current limitations imposed are purposely done at this time to prevent our historical data servers from being oversubscribed. I do realize you can say that this is any easy fix ŕ Get more hardware but it’s a bandwidth issue at this time and our priorities are focused on your other issue ŕ Getting rid of bugs in NT7
- There was never a BE button on the SuperDOM since when it was designed, the screen space was premium and I personally felt that one can modify a stop loss quite quickly on the DOM itself ŕ I will mark this down as a request (it is the first one)
And yes, we do use our own software to trade.
The following 2 users say Thank You to NinjaTrader for this post:
Wonder what happened? I ran it for over 12 hours so far.
Did some sim trading to look for problems. It did hang once when I wanted to see how fast I could click the buy market button. 5 times really fast caused a hang.
Notice the expiration data? They expect to be around for a while.
R.I.P. Andy Zektzer (ZTR), 1960-2010.
Please visit this thread for more information.
ok, well thanks for the apology, it was just a bit frustrating when I finally went back to my old 6.5 and it started crashing after having been up for 18 hours on NT7 ! I did start out very carefully testing NT7 and started to use it increasingly over the last few weeks and was phasing out NT 6.5, especially since it was made a public beta and I was enjoying it (when it was working well) maybe I jumped on it too quickly.
As I have said before in the forum here, if (when) you can get all the bugs out, its going to be a great tool. I know its got to be frustrating for you guys also, I work in the industry also and have a love hate relationship with computers (and customers !) It can really turn your brain to mush (for me anyway).
Anyway I'll stick to NT 6.5 on my main machine to be safe and maybe run a 7 on a test VPS for a while. I suspect that some of the DB issues I get are from the disconnect that TWS create, as you probably know it closes every day. I have TWS Starter to run it, but that could be punching holes in the DB maybe. I think I will plan to go back to Xenfire in the future.
Understood on the DOM, but on the chart trader this is lots of room, and in a fast market like CL where it flicks around, a B/E button would be handy, infact since there is so much room on the chart trader you could also put buttons to Take Off contracts, from 1 - 10. So you just click for example number 5 and you've closed 5 of your big S&P contracts (haha) instantly. The rooms there anyway. Because if you have an ATM running then you need a separate DOM up to peel off contracts which just takes up screen room.
Hopefully some other members will come up with suggestions for future consideration, the better NT becomes, the better it is for all of us.
btw I thought it might be to limit bandwidth that the replays are not available easily. Still if you throttled it, or put it at the bottom of QOS I would be happy for it to dribble in over a few hours (overnight), rather than spend the same few hours clicking (or sometimes I get my girlfriend to do it !)
Z, on the fresh install there was some chart issues. It would not load the past 24 hours of data, but all older data was there, so there was a big gap and then on one chart everytime I scrolled it about it just crashed instantly.
On the old, upgrade NT was spitting errors on loading it and then crashing. I've deleting everything from NT7 now and might put the next 16 on when it comes out.
I'll email in the screen shots and logs of the fresh install issues over the weekend for support to look at.
Webart, have you tried doing this when NT7 won't start or misbehaves... sometimes there is corruption in workspaces.
With NT7 closed, use Windows Explorer to move all the workspaces out of your workspace folder. Save them in some other, known location.
Restart NT7. Try creating some charts just to make sure that you can do that OK.
Move your archived workspaces back into the workspace folder one at a time and try to open them. Any that cause problems or won't open are corrupted.
Since first starting with NT7 late last year I have had to do this a few times to recover from no-start conditions, but never had to reinstall NT7. And the many other times when I did reinstall NT, usually NT6.5, it never did any good.
The worst problem I had with NT7 was when, with NT7 seeming to run OK, the computer would completely freeze no matter what I did. The problem turned out to be AVG Antivirus Version 9, which goes nuts when NT7 is running. I had to downgrade it to Version 8.
The following user says Thank You to Zondor for this post:
I read in several posts that minutes bars are the best in term of accuracy when compared to other types (vol. ticks, range, etc.) in NT. Are seconds bars as good as minutes or they fall in the others category?
Platform: NinjaTrader (It's a love/hate relationship)
Trading: CL, TF, 6E
Posts: 176 since May 2010
Thanks: 60 given,
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As a whole, I must say my experiences with NT7 have been much better than with 6.5. I constantly experienced crashes and database errors with 6.5. I haven't experienced any crashes yet with 7. I'm running Win7 pro x64 on an AMD TL60 w/ 4gb ram with a boatload of crap running in the background too.
I would love to see cumulative bid/ask volume on the DOM & an estimated position in queue feature. I love NT charts, but TT has perfected the DOM. I'm stuck using X_Trader as 6.5 was too unstable for me. I'll be switching to NT7 once it's out of beta. Even with having to pay static DOM credits it's a far better value. I'd even be willing to pay for credits to gain the other features like EPIQ and volume profile on the DOM if they are also patented by TT.
I'm curious if lifetime license cost will go up once NT7 is released.
The following user says Thank You to Slipknot511 for this post:
is NinjaTrader here always the same guy or do we talk to various persons here ?
maybe would be nice to sign with a name to know whos speaking if you are diff. folks on the same account.
LOL vegas, yes that would be a good starting point wouldn't it.
I get pretty frustrated with while traversing trading styles. For swing trading stocks on the ASX, NT is a bit of a prick and hassle to get IB codes and everything you do or need to do with Stock Codes you always gotta go through the instrument manager.
Meaning, even if I import a list of some codes from another watch list and then format it accordingly for import, I then can use most of the stocks but then it Rejects some of the other stocks, this pisses me off to high heaven and is frustrating.
The code is correct the stock is good and the rest of the world acknowledges this except for NT and IB combo.
The other thing is, if you then type into a chart a code say ie: BHP
I have the chart and Why cannot not be able to right click it and then send the frigging thing into Market Analyser watch list or something?? This would save Users having to continually Double Task all the time. Not enough user needs analysis put into this I feel and it can be extremely Frustrating.
Or then it gives you BHP in the US when I need ASX version of it, or another code does the same as in type in LNC (Linc Energy) it gives me US version of the stock price not the ASX version and the US LNC version is not even in the instrument manager while the ASX version of LNC is, mean, too many games to play with the program.
In some ways, it feels like more work than its worth, plus you have all the other customisations that you would need to do to make it start to resemble what any other platform would look like within say the Market Analyser, unformatted and staring at it you would think you were looking at a Text File ASCII and not really noticing what should be green or red, up or down and all because the user needs to do it, and the users needs to format each cell. Is this why I wish to pay over $1200 Dollars Australian, so that I have work my ass or do a science class and actually forget about my trading style??? Hmmm, makes me wonder.
I feel the program is excellent if you are trading a specific instrument or a set of specific instruments and you are only focussed on those instruments. But too many games to be had when having a mixed trading styles or when you dont wish to be a mathematics programmer genius or some slick script wizard. Out of the box its not for the average Jo, imo, ATM.
Well, that is my gripe with NT.
So much for asking for a discount or winning the NT life time comp....LOL
Just a reminder that when I was using AVG9 it would cause the computer to completely lock up whenever Ninjatrader was running. Webart, have you tried running without AVG9 since then?
AVG is discontinuing support for AVG 8.5 making an upgrade to version 9 mandatory. Is anyone here successfully running the current version 9 on a machine with Ninjatrader?
Ray, if you see this, can you suggest anti-virus programs that are known to work well with Ninjatrader?
I have 2 computers using AVG Free version 9 with NT7 and I can't say AVG has caused any of my the issues with NT7 I've found. Both are Windows Vista 32 bit. My father had a terrible time with AVG Free 9.0 cashing his computer, and he doesn't use NT. He upgraded from 8.? to 9.0 without uninstalling 8.? first. After uninstalling 9.0 and re-installing it, his crashing issues disappeared. He was using Windows XP.
AVG instructions for uninstall are different in that you run the latest install file and select uninstall that way. We never could get it to uninstall by using the uninstall under the control panel.
I've been using Avira Antivir for more than 8 years and have stuck to it after I carried out a research on various antivirus software/tools (Norton, McAfee, AVG, etc). It has never caused any conflicts with my NT installation or usage. One big pro of Avira is its fast and un-disruptive process of online virus updates against the most recent virus signatures; and its easy configuration setup. I've used the Antivir Personal (free version) for more than 5 years. I've been using the Avira Premium Security Suite (paid for version) for more than 2 years now (on my Windows XP running on my VMware Fusion/Apple Mac machine environment) - I don't need or use antivirus for my Mac OS X itself.
Lolu
The following 2 users say Thank You to lolu for this post:
Having previously worked in IT and computing for many years, I started ditching AVG a few after it left v6 because after that it started doing what Norton used to do, becoming Bloatatious (if such a word exists).
Even the free version of Avira for the 1 day nag screen it has is worth its weight in gold and plus the fact that it is not bloat work and consistently keeps the quantity of processes down and seems more courteous to other startup applications.
