Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I've just gone through a lot of older posts regarding Velocity Futures as a broker, NinjaTRader as a platform, and Trading Technologies as the data feed.
Anyone currently using that combination? Any feedback, other than the historical data?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
@GaryD - this is the setup I currently use. I am "grandfathered" into getting historical data (NT has told me this) so I'm not sure if you would get historical data free using this setup. I pay NT $180 every quarter to trade with their system but the commissions from Velocity are very competitive.
I have used tradestation and Infinity in the past so these are my only comparisons. This current configuration (vel/NT/TT) is the best in terms of stability, execution, and lag. I do get some lag during extreme, fast market conditions but overall I am very satisfied. I've had a few customer service issues with Velocity but this sort of comes with the territory. I will say that I used to have an account representative at Velocity and since that changed I am less satisfied with the customer service with account-related issues.
Another quip with Velocity is that if I need to call them to adjust an order, get flat, or whatever because of a platform or connectivity issue, it is a much longer process than I had with Infinity. With Infinity, I called my account rep and he could adjust my position/orders immediately with no lag. At Velocity, it takes a while to get connected, then verify your account, then finally begin to adjust orders/positions. At Infinity this would take a few seconds, at Velocity it takes more like 30 seconds or 45 seconds - which as you know can be a long time in the crude market...
Overall I am please with the combo as far as the connection, etc. Just a little less satisfied with the phone service from Velocity.
Hope that helps.
surly
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
I used tradestation when I first discovered futures trading, and loved certain things about it (like easylanguage, historic data, multiple screen combinations), but after switching to Mirus/Zen Fire realized it was horrible for data lag and data outage. Zenfire has been extremely reliable in comparison, and knowing what I know now would never consider Tradestation again without significant changes in their data service.
I was looking Velocity somewhat for commisions, but more because I have read TT was the original, and Zen Fire was the copy. I was curious if there was anything better than Zenfire. For me, reliability is #1, trade desk #2, commissions #3.
But, after more study I believe what I learned is that a straight TT/Velocity account, without your grandfathered status, gives zero historical data other than what was recorded while you were connected previously?
For my type of analysis, that could be a deal killer, as high/low pivots could be non-existent on my charts. Wave analysis would be altered some, but more important would be stop placement, identifying zones, etc.
If you can get historical data, I wonder why they can't offer it to everyone? Or maybe they do, but for a fee?
Zen Fire is a brand owned by some partners of Mirus Futures. It is an "copy" of Rithmic, re-branded, and running their own servers.
NinjaTrader & Zen Fire are very close partners. A deal was made a long time ago for NT to provide historical backfill to NT customers who use Zen Fire (or Rithmic).
The above is just my "best guess", as hard facts on these partnerships are hard to find.
TT, like Zen Fire and Rithmic, does not provide backfill. Some platforms have taken it upon themselves to provide backfill to their customers, such as Sierra Chart (universally, not just for Zen), and of course NinjaTrader (only for Zen).
Personally, I use IQFeed which is regarded as "the best", is not that expensive after the CME fee waiver, and can be used with any major platform (MultiCharts, NinjaTrader, Sierra Chart, Investor/RT, more). It can also be used concurrently with multiple platforms on the same machine.
I also use TT+Velocity and find the combination of the above to be very good.
However, if you are using NinjaTrader, and you are executing via TT, then you will need to find historical backfill. I would recommend IQFeed, although Kinetick is an option if you plan to only exclusively use NinjaTrader, and I believe it is slightly cheaper. Kinetick is a re-branded IQFeed that works only with NinjaTrader.
So, if I am understanding this correctly, even Zen Fire does not give historical data, NT does it for them?
If that combination of a reliable feed plus historical comes at no additional cost with NT/Zen Fire, what is it about the IQ Feed / TT combination that makes you choose that setup? Does your trade frequency x the reduced commision structure offset the additional cost of a supplementary historical data feed?
The economics of a TT/Velocity account may not be the same for me right now as it could be for you and/or a very active trader. My trading lately is very sporadic, 10 one day, nothing the next, one the next, etc.
I've been abused by trading in the past to the point where I've decided if $1 per RT makes or breaks me, I should be in sim. But, I'm still considering the TT/Velocity thing as it seems like a better deal from a commission side. Even as a part time trader I probably log 100 RTs a month. $1,200.00 a year would send me and my wife on a cruise, or pay for my beer for a year, or my wife's hair/nails/waxing/yoga/clothes for a month. And to think, she doesn't like me trading...
That is correct. Rithmic/Zen does not provide historical backfill. NinjaTrader does it for NT users using Zen or Rithmic.
Hmm, well there is additional cost associated with Zen Fire or Rithmic. Those brokerages (Amp, Mirus, Optimus etc) are passing on a cost of providing Zen Fire to you with each transaction, or some other internal costs associated with NinjaTrader customers. That is fine for the majority of people. But I don't personally use NinjaTrader, and I also shopped commissions and found others to be less expensive, so there was no reason for me to be using a primarily NinjaTrader oriented brokerage (Zen Fire/Rithmic).
So for me, it made more sense to go with a TT broker like Velocity. I liked them as an FCM, like their website, customer portal, up front commissions, etc. You'll find other recommendations and reviews for different FCM's and IB's in our Brokers section of the forum.
As for why I use IQFeed, I originally started using it because I wanted long term backfill for backtesting. Now a days I use it because I want accurate data, and want to use the same data feed in multiple charting applications concurrently, and because my brokerage feed (TT) does not provide backfill, so I have to use something.
You should do all of your own research and make your own decisions based on what is important to you. Different people will have different opinions It depends on what platform you use, what trading style you have, your relationship with your existing broker, and many other factors.
At Velocity Futures, TT is the only transactional data feed available for Ninja. If connected only to TT, I DO get historical backfill for instruments supported by the TT feed. Presumably it is coming from the Ninjatrader servers.
The TT Adapter is not used by nearly as many people as the ZenFire adapter. As a result, it has been neglected for quite some time. I posted this in the Ninjatrader forum so hopefully it will get some attention.
There does not seem to be any prospect of a 64 bit version, so with a 64 bit machine, the only choice is using the 32 bit version of Ninjatrader with all the compromises that entails. Certainly not optimum.
Every morning at 4:00AM Eastern Time, TT disconnects momentarily, and reconnects automatically. Lately I have been finding that if I have slept through this event, the charts stopped at the time of the disconnect and did not restart. This also causes a gap in the historical data that must be fixed by manually initiated downloads from the historical data manager. (For now I will try getting around this by disconnecting from TT before I go to sleep and leaving only Kinetick, my secondary data feed, running).
There is all kinds of "rude" bad behavior if I check the Connect Automatically box for the TT connection.The worst and most inexcusable one is that if the box is checked and I dare to start Ninjatrader during the weekend when TT is down, Ninjatrader gets stuck in a limbo state and will not display anything at all after the Splash disappears. (The only way I know of to get around this is to start Ninja with the computer disconnected from the internet, which causes other problems.)
The TT Adapter is a mess, long overdue for updating.
"If we don't loosen up some money, this sucker is going down." -GW Bush, 2008
“Lack of proof that something is true does not prove that it is not true - when you want to believe.” -Humpty Dumpty, 2014
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” Prof. Albert Bartlett
It depends on what platform you use, what trading style you have, your relationship with your existing broker, and many other factors.
