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Overwhelmed! Which platform do I choose? Sierra? Ninja? MT5?
Traders, I'm sooooo overwhelmed with the variety of Charting and Trading platforms out there. Which do I choose? I'm evaluating between Sierra Charts, Ninja Trader 8, Metatrader 5. The primary reason I'm choosing these is because there a couple providers of indicators (MBox and some other) support some but not all. Ninja and Meta are the ones that are both supported. I hear amazing things about Sierra, it's stable and customizable but terrible looking UI and hard to use. I hear Ninja is super popular, but slow and unstable.
I'm thinking of signing with AMP Futures which seems to have deals with many platform providers (except Ninja).
I'm overwhelmed. Appreciate guidance. Thanks in advance!
I've being trading Options using ThinkorSwim. It's a great platform but their commissions for futures are expensive. I'm also new to Futures trading.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Sierra has more built-in goodies (Indicators aka Studies) that with Ninja if you wanted to use them you would probably either have to buy from third party vendors, join the elite section here or go back and use NT7 instead of 8 (because there are way more indicators for it in the NT forums) - but NT7 lacks major features like Tabs that both NT8 and sierra have. Why are tabs awesome? cause you can duplicate them.
Also if you have a very old pc (like less than 8gb memory) sierra would be the way to go but really, anyone who is gonna trade futures would probably not be using a very old PC unless they are the type that really hates the forced update problems that plague the modern Windows OS's.
Sierra uses like 1/10th the memory of ninja if I were to make a rough estimate. Or at least no more than 1/5th.
I would just evaluate NT8, SC and MT5 if I were you and see what suits you best. The other platforms probably are best just for people with specific needs (like MultiCharts for tradestation code compatibility)
also if for some reason you needed a ton of charts to be open simultaneously... SC is probably better than Ninja for that. All depends what indicators you use I guess but Ninja can be really slow with a lot of charts.
@kevinhpchan Spend 3 hours with each platform then make a decision. You mentioned 3 platforms: you should be able to finish it in less then 1 or 2 days. If you run into problems you can always change platforms. Easy.
If I had to do all over again and only had one computer and data feed; knowing what I know now, I would pick Sierra charts. I only use NT8 because I have used it for so long and use 3rd party apps (like Jigsaw, mzPack and OFA) that only run on it. But I concur with others here, SC is the way to go. It has a lighter touch on your computer and that is especially important during heavy volume times. NT, I have found by sad experience, needs to run minimally if you are to try and use it to trade during these times - and I have a very good trading computer and internet connection, and even run NT in a above normal CPU priority. SC also has a good support base, has good volume analysis tools built in and more flexibility in configuring all the indicators and tools it uses.
I have used SuperCharts, Tradestation, eSignal, Multicharts (I also like MC), NT7. Now I do pre-market prep with NT8 and then close the workspace. I trade with only Jigsaw Daytradr (bridge) and OFA running.
Hope that helps.
Full time financial software beta tester. ~When asked what I do for a living.
I'm an NT8 user, and I hate it. I hate it every single flipping day. I only use them because i'm stubborn. It locks up, freezes, crashes, destroys workspaces, does things you wish it would never do.
NT7 on the other hand is a great tool and the only reason I don't go back is i'm stubborn. I consider myself a 'beta' tester, and it's been out for 2 years. Sure, you should not be beta testing with your live money and such, but I have them on speed dial now. I submit an email about literally every day for new 'feature requests' or 'this is broken please look into' updates.
Please, use SC, or be warned to stay in NT7. NT7, again, is a great tool and I truly love it.
So if you're trying to choose, use SierraCharts or NT7.
Once you get past the learning curve, it's a pretty amazing platform. There's no one simple answer here @kevinhpchan, you definitely need to investigate them all for yourself. Check them all out, just expect to spend a little more time figuring out how to do things in SC than the others. Muahahahahaaaaa....
