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Reliable Discretionary Futures Trading Platform with ATM
MultiCharts is following the concept of NinjaTrader. The official release of the MultiCharts .NET was exactly 10 days ago. NinjaTrader 7 is already around for several years.
How do you know that it is superior to NinjaTrader 7 after 10 days? I have been alpha-testing MultiCharts .NET and it is indeed a good product. But before I can use it for discretionary trading, I would need to recode my indicators and do some serious testing. Expect some bugs 10 days after the release date of a new software package.
MultiCharts has been faster with new releases in the past than NinjaTrader. However, NinjaTrader support is much more open and responsive. One of the main reasons that I have opted for NinjaTrader is the community. Before ever you touch any product, check whether there is a living community of traders, who support the product and allow you to solve the problems that you may encounter. Without an active community, your trading software is worthless!
NinjaTrader and MultiCharts both have very active communities. Please compare with the fora of other software packages.
I have a very good experience with NinjaTrader support. The guys are reactive and willing to discuss all current limitations of the product in detail. They have basically solved all my problems or at least explained why a limitation will only be removed with NinjaTrader 8. All my questions have been answered in a timely and polite manner.
You may also have a look at the 2012 Reader's Choice Awards of the magazine "Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities". NinjaTrader has come first or second in all six categories, with only TradeStation having a better rating in 3 categories. MultiCharts is only listed once as semi-finalist. They have made a lot of improvements during the last 12 months, and it takes some times until this recognized by the market.
I have used almost any software you can think of during the past 35 years from DOS versions to what we have now. I have not used MC, but I have to give my high regards and thumbs up to NT7, it gives me the freedom to explore ideas not easily available by other software.
I just wish Ray will elaborate a little on their update policies to silence the undue criticisms.
And, @Fat Tails; the size of a software forum, threads, and posts is like a double edge sword. It could also be a sign of more issues, more novice traders than professionals, insufficient features and documentation, etc. I think if others will be as generous as NT to give away a lifetime free software they will have a lot more in their communities.
Personally, I will only use a software that has passed the test of the time.
@aligator: Yes, but if you look at the forum you will rapidly know what is happening. Let us just have a look at a few examples......
Ensign Windows: I have not been able to locate any forum.
eSignal: 100 members online, 2 posts today, 47,207 members, 29,884 threads, 135,803 posts -> the current participation is not impressive, but the trading platform lives
Investor RT: I have not been able to locate any forum.
MultiCharts: members online not disclosed, 27 posts today, 1,942 members, 7,635 threads, 44,351 posts -> this trading platform is alive.
Neoticker: members online not shown, 2 posts this month, 67,837 members, 6,622 threads, 41,265 posts -> the forum is dead, the software has not passed the test of time
NinjaTrader: 131 members online, over 100 posts today, 36,918 members, 50,697 threads, 293,804 posts -> this trading platform is alive.
Trader's Studio: Last post from March 12, 2012 -> the forum is dead.
Wealth-Lab: 280 members online, 11 posts for today -> this trading platform is alive.
This list is not exhaustive, but from what I have seen I would immediately eliminate Ensign Windows, Investor RT, Neoticker & Trader's Studio, and only consider the other four as a serious option.
I am not saying that the forum tells you everything, but it does tell you something, in particular, if it is non-existent or dead.
Ninjatrader 7 was in beta for almost a year and a half and was finally released in Dec 2010. So effectively only one major release in three years with only a handful of bug fix updates in between.
In the same time frame Multicharts has released
Multicharts 7
Multicharts 8
Multicharts 8 .net (completely different product to Multicharts 8)
So three major versions released and a steady minor dot point updates in between. And it seems quite likely that NT8 will not be out this year. If it follows the same pattern as Ninjatrader 7 then we can expect a NT8 beta starting next year and finishing sometime in 2014. This is just laughable now.
As for being superior for discretionary trading, the single biggest advantage is the ability to attach an exit strategy to an already open position and being able to change everything about your exits on the fly. Discretionary trading comes down to reacting to price action. Everything is fluid, priorities change, fundamentals change in minutes. Trading in a twitter world where a Euro politician opening his mouth can move the market hundred pips.
With Ninjatrader there is no option to react to changes while trading price action on charts. You must have the incredible foresight to setup your exits and trailing stops and breakevens just right or it's bad luck mate. I can't begin to tell you how much easier this one feature in Multicharts is making managing my trades.
Another huge plus is that for the first time I have nice market depth window to trade scalps in. Such a marked difference , both visually and functionally, from the monstrosity that is Ninjatrader FXProDOM. You can't even resize the NT FXPro window so it's great fun running it on a high resolution 27inch monitor... not. And neither can you enter in a limit price for a trade, you must use middle mouse button and mouse scroll to move the price a few pips at a time.
Just being able to study a useful DOM in Multicharts is already showing me some patterns and possible scalp entries.
As for your comment about community, I do agree that Ninjatrader has more visible user presence both in their official forum and here on futures.io (formerly BMT). But since I am using the Multicharts .net version I can have the best of both worlds, if there is NT indicator that I really like then I can look at the source code to trivially translate the logic into a Multicharts indicator.
And I have had enough of the Ninjatrader support copy & paste reply of "We will add this to our list of enchantments for future consideration" and then not hear anything about it for years.
I have put some points in my post above but to elaborate
1) The layout for creating exit strats and other orders is much more logical in Multicharts. Try it yourself, create a exit with 3 levels (50% of the position, 30% and 20%), each with a breakeven point and stoploss + profit target and different trailing stops for the 30% and 20%. Do it in both MC and NT and in each save it as a template to attach to your orders. Let us know what you think.
2) In MC you can attach the exit strat to an already open position which you can't in NT.
3) In MC you can change everything for your exits like breakeven or trail stop triggers, targets on the fly. With NT either you get everything right when you create the strat and open the position or bad luck. Now I only trade via charts because I need to see the price action. But in NT Super DOM you can change trail settings on the fly. Unfortunately for some unknown arbitrary reason, the Super DOM does not support the instruments that I trade.
4) performance wise I found MC more responsive. Even simple things like making an change in your indicator code is fast and easy, compared to NT where opening the Indicator editor window and recompiling and reloading indicator on your chart can bring a hefty system to it's knees.
Also thanks to @Fat Tails we know that opening a Edit indicator window in NT sky-rockets the memory usage and simply closing the editor window will not reclaim that memory so you have exit and restart Ninjatrader completely to get memory back.
I could go on with many other things but I think it just comes down to the fact that Ninjatrader has not been updated in years, while other companies have kept releasing new and better features. It is not a bad product at all, in fact when it came out it was the best, but now in comparison it just comes off as old and clunky.
@Traderji: I really do not appreciate your style of discussing the differences between NinjaTrader & MultiCharts. You don't even try to be objective. .
1) This thread is about FUTURES not about FOREX. What you do is to complain about a few features of the FXPro DOM. Fact is that you cannot even use it for trading futures. For futures the SuperDOM is used. No point here to discuss the FXPro DOM, as even for FOREX you would be better off to trade via the chart trader.
2) Your main subject is modifying an ATM strategy on the fly. Your entire judgement of NinjaTrader is based on a single item, which probably no one else uses. If you need to edit your strategy parameters again and again, then you can also set your stops and targets manually. which would be easier- The reason for using an automated strategy is the automation and not to switch back and forth. Also the NinjaTrader SuperDOM - which is used for FUTURES (this is not a thread on FOREX) - allows you to change the trail settings on the fly.
3) It is true that editing an indicator and closing it again requires a bit of RAM, but this would only be a problem
-> if somebody plays around with indicator or strategies while trading (which the last thing I would do)
-> or if the machine used for coding has less than 4 GByte of RAM, whch I consider the minimum required as per today
The amount of RAM required depends on the indicator in your collection. If you are playful as I am with hundreds of indicators and strategies stored under -> bin -> custom -> indicators, then in fact editing one indicator may quickly add between 600MByte and 800 MByte of RAM. If you transfer the 90% that you never use into another folder, the problem is also solved.
4) Don't tell me that a product, which was the best in the end of 2010 is old and clunky 18 months later. Somehow this impossible ....
So rather than bashing NinjaTrader to seek revenge, why not admit that both NinjaTrader and MultiCharts are outstanding products. There is no absolute best product, and there is no need to rank them.
For the time being I have problems setting up merge back-adjusted contracts in MultiCharts. The charts do not update, and I sometimes get error messages that the instrument does not exist. I need merge-backadjusted data to calculate Fib levels. I am not saying this, because I want to bash MultiCharts, I think there will be a solution to this problem sooner or later.
The truth is not black and white, but it comes in shades of gray. I understand that fundamentalists only know two categories and are not willing to see the shades.
Who said anything about only Forex? This thread is about discretionary trading which is done through the charts. And the capability of MC chart trader is better than NT chart trader.
Now as to why ATM strats are so important - if you are trading across multiple instruments using Ninjatrader you are forced to manually manage open positions across many charts. Things like setting a breakeven or trailing stop is important for the simple reason that you don't want a winning position to turn into a loser because you weren't fast enough jumping from one chart to another.
I don't know if you do much discretionary trading or even if you do Intraday or lower timeframe, either way if you are saying that no one else but me worries about managing my position exits... well then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
You are accusing me of not being objective but for some reason my personal opinion of Ninjatrader is causing you rush to their defence.
- I said they release at a snail's pace and you jumped up denying that. As I wrote MC have released far more frequently than NT. And it is not just MC that is faster, another alternate is Sierra Charts. SC with apparently just one developer puts out new features and releases at a pace that puts NT to shame.
- I write why I think discretionary trading is superior in MC and you come back with the silly argument that no one else cares about it.
- I write how there is zero communication from Ninjatrader about future updates or timelines, something that is considered as fact among the userbase. Just look at the complaints about this in NT threads. And your reply to this is "Well they tell me what is going on, so that should be OK for you". I glad you have access to the secret kool aid coming out of NT headquarters but please excuse me if I don't run my business on the basis of "It should be OK, Fat Tails said so"
I am just writing what I personally think is wrong with NT and how MC does those things better and apparently that is me not be objective.
I think you are the one who is not being objective. How about stating that you sell indicators for Ninjatrader and which probably means you have a commercial relationship with them?
You can have the last word if you want because I am done discussing this with you.
Traderji bhai,
Just wanted to say please don't leave the discussion, as at least I found your posts particularly helpful as you detailed the specifics of what you liked more about MC, from more timely updates/public project management, more flexible exit strategies/changing them on the fly (I've needed this before), easier to use DOM, overall performance, etc and I am in agreement with you that they are important factors to help with choosing a platform. I've also been doing more reading on the recent versions of MC and NT7, and have found users of both still complaining of bugs/crashes as well. I've heard of the least amount of issues with SC. I'm sure none of these platforms are perfect, I may end up just trying out all of them and see how they work for me.
Interesting point Fat Tails, what does MC say regarding this issue? Also, just curious, why do you want to use merge back adjusted contracts vs continous for fib levels? I would think the fib levels would be drawn from more accurate prices in a continous contract?
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