Does anyone autotrade futures with ninja?

R

Runningbear

Ninjatrader promotes the autotrading feature of their software heavily but it seems not many traders actually use this functionality.

Does anyone on ET autotrade futures with Ninja day in and day out?

I'm really interested to hear from anyone about their experiences autotrading with this product.

thanks in advance,

Runningbear
 
I have autotraded equities with NinjaTrader (6.5) every day for last 18 months, and am also in the process of adding a futures strategy.

I think it's a great platform. It has small quirks, like any software, but I have found them easy to work around. And I love the fact that NinjaScript makes it easy to prototype ideas, and NinjaTrader makes simple backtests and optimizations easy, too. I wouldn't use it to autotrade strategies requiring more than about 4 or 5 entries in a minute (I have tried), but for anything less time and order intensive than that, I think it's great and adequate.

NinjaTrader 7 looks even better than 6.5, and the only reason I haven't switched yet is that I have my strategies written for 6.5 and haven't had time to deal with converting them. I'll need to tackle that in next few months, I imagine.

I have not used NinjaTrader to simulate at the full order book level (am not even sure that you can), but using it to simulate at the last traded price level (or bar level) is adequate for lots of situations, IMHO.

Hope that helps.
 
Abattia,

If you don't mind me asking, which broker do you trade through? Also, what are some of the quirks you've had to deal with? I'd like to eventually go fully automated so having some idea of the likely ideas would be great.

thanks,

Runningbear
 
Probably before going automatic the main concerns is being sure the the whole thing is reliable and fast: even with high end setup if you have a lot of tick by tick indicators , you are risking a 'not responding' during a fast market. Also be aware of limitation or risk on backtesting module. The 6.5 is no more developed so every bets is on NT 7 now but even after the 'production' switch (ending of beta phase) of the latest months, at each release there are a lot of 'fixes', not merely new features. NT and BMT forums could help in your investigations, too. I use NT 7 just for charting.
 
I also use Ninja 6.5 for autotrading; started with equities 2.5 yrs ago, moved to futures 1.5 yrs ago. I trade around 12,000 sides a month currently, so cumulatively more than 100,000 overall.

I agree there are quirks. I believe there remains a race condition in the code... There are times (once a week?) where order quantity goes wrong, or an order just isn't submitted. But you gradually build up checks that allows you to be aware of these issues.

With futures, I've traded over Pats (horrible), IB, ZenFire... And ultimately settled with Rithmic. I am currently planning to explore TT as well, both as a backup and as a mechanism for more overseas instruments.

I always intended to replace Ninjas order execution code with calls into either QuickFix or Rithmic /TT API... Thinking that would be faster or more reliable; I could just leave Ninja as a backtest tool, quote parser, etc. But 2 yrs into this, I just haven't found it necessary to make the change. Im satisifed with my results, and if it ain't broke...

And btw, I've probably placed up to 10-20 trades a minute during peak. It helps I'm only looking at 8-12 futures instruments, rather than hundreds of equity symbols. I also kep my event-based code as simple as possible.
 
I find threads like this terribly intimidating. I've been working, more or less full time, to become a consistently profitable trader in the ES. It seems that I'm finally there -- after five grueling years.

Yes, it's taken me five fucking years to learn how to take two or three positive expectancy trades a day in one instrument ... and here you guys are, firing off two or three trades a minute in 12 instruments.

I know, I'm a tortoise. But geez ...
 
Thanks for the insightful responses guys. They give me confidence that ninja will be able to do what I want.

My needs are very specific but not overly complex. I presently have a system that is programmed in esignal EFS that is profitable and I have been trading for a while. I now have the confidence to try trading it on auto so I'm thinking of reproducing the code in Ninja.

Ninja does have the capability to execute esignal trades but I think that option may add another layer of complexity that could possibly cause problems.

The system is on the Eurostoxx50 futures contract on Eurex. I have an account with IB but would eventually like to move to TT. So ninja is ideal in that it could cater for my current and future needs. I will probably use the IBController to handle the login issue.

My system only does a few trades a day - 2 to 4 trades a day is normal. I'll be trading a set position size and I'll be using market orders which I think will help avoid a lot of potential syncing issues.

The main reason I want to switch to auto is because my system trades across the entire 14 hour time frame of this market, which is too long for me to manually trade. At present I can only take trades during the European trading session.

I will be watching over the trades a fair amount of the time, including open and close. So if there is an issue, I'll be in a position to manually correct it.

I will be using ninjatrader 7, on Windows 7 64bit with esignal as my datafeed on a DSL line.

Is there anything else I should think about before I give full auto a crack?

Runningbear
 
Quote from Runningbear:



I will be using ninjatrader 7, on Windows 7 64bit with esignal as my datafeed on a DSL line.

Is there anything else I should think about before I give full auto a crack?

Runningbear
More...

Check carefully NT w/eSignal and especially if it's reliable running it as regular 32 or 64 bit version under Windows 7 x64. Check the Release Notes and further customers using your specific ninja combo; it's not the same thing using a datafeed or another or 32/64 bit. Also with Windows 7 SP1 coming next weeks, they are implementing a new 'beta 3' that deals with that and 'intellectual property'.
 
Bernard, it appears you are correct.

I just did a google search and Ninja 7 64 bit is not compatible with the esignal data feed which is 32 bit. So I'd have to use the Ninja 32 bit version. This a disappointing as I use a a lot of memory to run my systems.

Does anyone run into to memory problems running ninja in 32 bit mode?
 
Quote from tortoise:

I find threads like this terribly intimidating. I've been working, more or less full time, to become a consistently profitable trader in the ES. It seems that I'm finally there -- after five grueling years.

Yes, it's taken me five fucking years to learn how to take two or three positive expectancy trades a day in one instrument ... and here you guys are, firing off two or three trades a minute in 12 instruments.

I know, I'm a tortoise. But geez ...
More...

My feelings exactly.
 
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