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The other day I've had some experience with NT acting up.
I thought it was NT that gone bad but I SUSPECT it was the datafeed. (I'll go into detail with this broker/datafeed setup when I have a chance in the future)
To make it short whenever I placed a order I got filled about 10 ticks worse (that's what showed up on chart trader & DOM then PnL) but order & execution record showed the correct prices. It was very confusing and kind of scary.
BTW, I was sim trading because I just switched to this new broker.
Anyway, the question is "a good idea to record the trading session?" with something like screencast or any other screen capturing program to protect myself from these bad failures from THE OTHER SIDES?
Is the recording really helpful if have to be used,,,,say,,,,in a court?
If so, what's the lightest program that can do the job without burdening CPU too much?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
If you have this kind of (lack of) confidence in your platform or broker, then the correct answer is to not use them -- not to record video to help you in court.
Exemplary answer it is.
I bought the lifetime license already and can't afford another platform,,,,so I have to live with the decision I made till it proves "fatal".
Broker/data pair,,,,I only start out with a small account so it's not like I'll ever go to court over this account but I just wanted
to know how the big boys handle these inevitable failures from so called "electronic trading".
I did a little search on futures.io (formerly BMT) for recording screen and testing a free progrom called "blueberry" and so far it's very light.
Kalalex, While screen recording can be beneficial, I'd focus 99% of my energies towards figuring out why you're getting what look like wildly ridiculous fills. You've not mentioned the broker, but I'd expect most of them to have an assigned account rep, who may be able to help you, at least steering you towards the source of the problem. The NT forums are pretty decent as far as product support goes, and I would definitely turn there as my prime focus; they are pretty informed on the various datafeeds they support, and getting an answer while in Sim mode is something they will assist with I believe.
BTW, perhaps it's something being lost in the communication, but when you use terms like 'inevitable' failure and it proving 'fatal', that sounds a little defeatist. While NT has issues, we should all feel reasonably secure that our trades will execute properly. (And, some brokers have other avenues where one can double check and/or do basic trade changes --- there's a basic CQG portal that Amp Futures offers)
I will note that when I first installed NT I had some explainable behaviour - I did an install to what I thought was a reasonably fit XP install, which had been in use for over a year, and, probably received a unhealthy amount of family usage, including installation and deinstallation of many smallish games and utilities. I find NT very picky in many ways. In brief, after I installed 64bit XP, and only what NT needs, banned others from using my trading PC (lol), it's been running quite well, (aside from the outright crashes ). I find rebooting my machine daily keeps it running healthy.
Thanks for your post. I don't quite understand your sentence, if the order & execution record showed showed the correct prices. But unless it all matches get it fixed - new datafeed? or whatever before trading real cash.
The prices NT shows me on my ES charts are more or less what my broker (IB) shows me (NT can be tick off and will correct if I refresh the chart). I don't think you have a hope winning anything in court and your "proof" will likely be ingored (just speaking about the experience I have had with brokers I have dealt with).
(I don't trade through NT. I place my trades directly at the broker (IB) and there is an audit trail there. I also follow the other gentlemans advice and only use my computer for trading.)
Let me see if this picture tells the story better than I do.
I captured this screen a little late but it still shows that "the ghost entry" at 822.1 was never reached but it shows up at chart trader & DOM. This happened many times till like 12:30. I know because I wanted to reproduce this a few more times so NT trace/log files have enough proof. All times are PST.
I blacked out broker/FCM/datafeed info since I'm not sure yet which party is the culprit.
So the consensus is that we are at the mercy of ( ) ---- broker, FCM, datafeed, platform ?
I heard/read many horror stories resulted from the failures in the process of electronic trading thus I used the word "inevitable".
I think I'll keep recording my trades. I saw some journal threads with video recordings when I searched for a program to record and I think it's not a bad idea either for journaling purpose.
Kalalex, while not your original question, I believe that screen recording a trading session (or portion of a session) can be very beneficial for learning purposes; an aid to teaching someone else, etc. You do have to watch the issue of storage, as the files can become quite large rather quickly. If you decide to record your trading on a regular basis, think about getting an inexpensive (not especially fast) external drive. Each day, after trading, transfer the screen recording file to the external drive for later use as needed. The only other thing to watch for would be any evidence that your system is being overworked/slowed down during trading as a result of adding the screen recording.
On Macs it is really easy to screen record. Quick Time Player 10 (included with new Macs) comes with screen recording capability. Quick and easy to use and makes a great video of a trading session. (In order to have a full range of choice of trading software, I run boot camp, Parallel's 7 and Windows 7 Professional to create a virtual PC environment (very fast and without problems in my experience)).
I agree with this, and originally I thought that was what this thread was about (from reading the title only).
I used to record with Camtasia both my chart/DOM and then "picture in picture" my webcam, which was used to correlate stress and anxiety with my behavior in the marketplace. For example, I could see if my butt was not firmly in the back of my chair (leaning over), and you could just see stress and anxiety in your facial expressions, and it would correlate heavily to stupid decisions in the market.
Those decisions then had nothing to do with market structure, but only with my own personal fear. It was an eye opening experience, and helped me a lot.
). I find rebooting my machine daily keeps it running healthy.
