Ninja charts inadequacy

[Craig66]

I am not sure if many knows, but with OnMarketData and OnMarketDepth events you can assess Time&Sales and Depth of Market programatically, and now the sky becomes the limit

I tried this with NT and IB and it was an exercise in frustration, the feed would randomly error and stop and/or the strategy would error on start up. As it turned out the start up error was a race condition where by OnMarketDepth was being called before setup was complete, they took some convincing on this matter, I got a custom build off them which fixed the first problem, but they simply were not able to fix the second one.

To be fair however, their support is fairly responsive and friendly considering the amount of idiots they seem to deal with, but the product is still immature IMHO.

 

[maxpi]

Quote from ML_QUANT:



What a shame, the concept of the C# was very nice and pleasing although again their Un-American attitude restricts you from using C# to it's fullest. They don't let the user do anything outside of their process!

Huh??

So a power shortage took out your battery operated laptop? Hardly is Ninja's fault. And.... they don let the user do things... I can use all sorts of things they don't support like C# arrays for example. They won't support it in their forums because it's not their stuff, it's Microsoft's stuff, but it works fine...

I really think that life must be terribly difficult for some and very easy for others!!

 

[WyckoffTrader]

For your retail user this will be fine and get them what they need to get their fix.

The power or pro user has no pull with these guys as they want desktops and not users that will pay more but are only a few hundred.

I have spoken to Ray a few times and he is going after the mass market and that is his model to make money....I would rather get a few good professional covered and make sure they get the support and will be around when the shit get crazy and not blow out like ma and pa are getting now.

 

[ML_QUANT]

Quote from maxpi:

Huh??

So a power shortage took out your battery operated laptop? Hardly is Ninja's fault. And.... they don let the user do things... I can use all sorts of things they don't support like C# arrays for example. They won't support it in their forums because it's not their stuff, it's Microsoft's stuff, but it works fine...

I really think that life must be terribly difficult for some and very easy for others!!

FYI, I don't use laptops. I carry with me a MBO, Vid. Card 2 HDD's, Mouse/KBD and a power supply + a very thin LCD! I use them open no cover none whatsoever just put a towel under the MBD and lay everything on top of it and runs very cool! And it works, I have done this for more than 15 years already.
Now, having said that I don't know what you're talking about, read my post and be specific. Like comment on the facr that NT is not an open API etc. Who said anything about an array? Arrays are for New Bee's who don't need full Matrix Ops.!

p.s.
When I say it's not an open API, I mean they don't let you Code and debug outside of the very labor some NT environment, other than a VERY limited DLL you can't access any of the Methods nor the events? I mean the thing doesn't even allow you Hot Keys(Although I've hacked my way into all of these) but, why should it be so difficult to get into their process? Just look at IB API, that what an API should be like at a minimum. BTW, the COM doesn't work neither...
Of course you can have arrays and many of the C# features but ONLY within their thread and process. Also read the opinions of the previous posters too on the same issues.

 

[saatfj]

I have been trying NT with Interactive Brokers account seems ok but found a few anoyances:
The strategies created with Wizzard don't plot accuratelly on Charts.
Strategies dont get saved in the system for the next session so you have to reload them every time.

I am considering Esignal how is it? suggestions?
Thanks

 

[BoyBrutus]

Quote from WyckoffTrader:



Been a user a long time but have the same memory issues and problems when making any changes during market hours.

It fine if you let it run your stuff and do not fiddle but any tweaks when the application memory is above 900 to 1MG and its toast.

WyckoffTrader, can you explain this further, I'm a new user.

Thx

 

[big_cabrito]

Quote from WyckoffTrader:



Been a user a long time but have the same memory issues and problems when making any changes during market hours.

It fine if you let it run your stuff and do not fiddle but any tweaks when the application memory is above 900 to 1MG and its toast.

Quote from BoyBrutus:

WyckoffTrader, can you explain this further, I'm a new user.

Thx

BoyBrutus, what WyckoffTrader is talking about is that you shouldn't muck around in the UI while a strategy is running. I'm another one that has this problem almost every day. I start my strategy running in the morning and then start playing with new strategies in the Strategy Analyzer. Unless you're VERY, VERY careful with what you're doing and keep an eye on the memory usage it WILL blow up and you'll have to restart Ninja. (Of course this always happens when the strategy is in a position so you have to manually fix that too )

I believe the problem is the way NT allocates memory. As Wyckoff said, if it tries to allocate memory over 1GB it WILL fail and it WILL need to be restarted. (IMO some basic error trapping would fix this.)

As was already mentioned, it is a pain that you can't save the strategies and have to re-enter them each time you start the platform.

Another annoyance that was already mentioned is if you take the focus off a window, most of the time you can't regain the focus by clicking the window on the taskbar.

All that being said, if you are a programmer IMO there is absolutely no better platform out there. As someone once posted here, if you know how to program you can make Ninja sing opera while it makes your coffee. If you're not a programmer and not running automated strategies you probably don't need Ninja.

 

[WyckoffTrader]

Nothing out there is Perfect..but we do have some very good strats built into ninja and as long as it does not fail and crash out of the blue..than we work on sim and other computers running development stuff.

All in all it works well enough and can be fixed with some clean up on memory.....but for the very low price, I do not mind using multiple computers to make the money with this ATS.

Trade them up.

 

[ScoobyStoo]

Totally agree. For an experienced programmer building an ATS the opportunities offered by NT are excellent. For a discretionary trader I would imagine there are better platforms available.

I have to say, I'm amazed by the amount of people on this thread who are complaining about their machines ceasing up whilst they attempt to do 101 different things using NT whilst it's running their strategies. IMHO, if you are daytrading it's utter madness to be running your ATS strategies on anything other than a high-spec dedicated box in a hosted environment. The software is cheap enough to out together a completely separate development environment which you can crash without fear.