Ninja Trader seems not so good compared to TWS...

[mikeriley]

I tested NT8 last year, and at least twice a month ALWAYS
on Sunday night I would have to call customer service
because their platform/servers were not running.

Which brought back nightmares of using TOS.

I use two platforms, so along with tradovate I thought
it would be cost effective, but alas I was wrong. So now
I'm back to Tradestation.

This is off the topic, but I also tested Ironbeam. I was shocked
to see they only have 3 drawing tools! It was very odd not
being able to draw a simple box or rectangle on the screen.
Their platform is super fast, just wish they had more tools.

 

[SunTrader]

First off i'd like to say that NT's customer service has been excellent. Very prompt and actually able to answer my questions. So kudos to them for having that on point.

Of course learning a new platform sucks but damn...NT is a mess. funding the account was easy enough but actually getting the platform live was unbelievably complicated.

Also disappointed to find that despite using them as a brokerage...you still have to buy an upgraded license to use some very basic features like "chart trader"...which is just simply having order entry attached to the chart. Also...how the hell do you view different contract dates? just another thing that TWS automatically does that NT doesn't.

Looks like a lifetime license is easily the best deal but I am very much considering closing the account and going elsewhere. $1,100 for this software seems so grossly overpriced...it must be me, Am I missing something here ET?

View attachment 304707


edit: I found how to view other contract dates: tools->instrument lists->futures->add->find/select instrument->edit->change expiry

there must be an easier way

Also, in case anyone was wondering, the only reason i am leaving IBKR is because their margin requirements are ridiculous. $2k to intraday 1 micro crude contract...

Just looked at TradeStation margin page and it is $770 for MCL intraday.

https://www.tradestation.com/pricing/futures-margin-requirements/

And if you hit basic trade levels (not sure what they are currently) software is free.

Just pay CME (and whatever other exchanges you trade on) data fees.

 

[TheDawn]

First off i'd like to say that NT's customer service has been excellent. Very prompt and actually able to answer my questions. So kudos to them for having that on point.

Of course learning a new platform sucks but damn...NT is a mess. funding the account was easy enough but actually getting the platform live was unbelievably complicated.

Also disappointed to find that despite using them as a brokerage...you still have to buy an upgraded license to use some very basic features like "chart trader"...which is just simply having order entry attached to the chart. Also...how the hell do you view different contract dates? just another thing that TWS automatically does that NT doesn't.

Looks like a lifetime license is easily the best deal but I am very much considering closing the account and going elsewhere. $1,100 for this software seems so grossly overpriced...it must be me, Am I missing something here ET?

View attachment 304707


edit: I found how to view other contract dates: tools->instrument lists->futures->add->find/select instrument->edit->change expiry

there must be an easier way

Also, in case anyone was wondering, the only reason i am leaving IBKR is because their margin requirements are ridiculous. $2k to intraday 1 micro crude contract...

Ninja Trader's got great charts and an awesome backtesting facility but it's horrible for live trading especially if you use IB as the execution broker. Ninja Trader's server is slow and prone to error and it's especially bad when you use programmed strategies to execute trades. There is a lot of incompatibility between Ninja Trader and IB. It's amazing to see Ninja Trader clears its own trades now but I still wouldn't use it for live trading.

Their customer service is nice but only to a certain point. Eventually when they see it's a problem on their end that they cannot resolve, they will try to blame it on you; it's either your computer that's slow or there are problems with your programs and then they try to push their expensive third-party vendors on you. So all in all, just use Ninja Trader for its charting, backtesting and demo trading but do NOT ever use them, EVER for live trading! There is a reason why people who have bought lifetime licenses are dumping them cheap.

 

[TheDawn]

How bad can their chart trader be compared to NT7 that you had to buy an add-on to make it better? They made a simple feature worse?

NT7 is miles better than their NT8. It offers you lot more flexibility in terms of coding in C# and is lot easier to learn and lot more user-friendly. It also gives you more choices in GUI design. They took away a lot of coding functionalities in NT8 and made it lot more bulkier. It's crap.

 

[Laissez Faire]

I tested NT8 last year, and at least twice a month ALWAYS
on Sunday night I would have to call customer service
because their platform/servers were not running.

That's odd. I live in Europe, so probably different servers, but never had an issue.

Ninja Trader's got great charts and an awesome backtesting facility but it's horrible for live trading especially if you use IB as the execution broker. Ninja Trader's server is slow and prone to error and it's especially bad when you use programmed strategies to execute trades. There is a lot of incompatibility between Ninja Trader and IB. It's amazing to see Ninja Trader clears its own trades now but I still wouldn't use it for live trading.

I don't know about IB, but NT on it's own (software + brokerage) works great on my end. I've used it through thousands of trades and literally for years with zero issues to speak of. I'd say less than 5 times in total have I ever had an issue with connectivity and that's through years of trading. And always quickly resolved - meaning I could quickly reconnect.

I've spoken out against NT/NT8 here on multiple occasions, but my complaints have never been related to the actual execution of trades which seems great to me.

 

[RedDuke]

When someone says Ninja servers it makes
Me laugh. There are no servers, ninja sits on your own pc, server, cloud and etc. any connection issues have nothing to do with ninja.

ninja is fantastic software, it is great for both live and automated trading. You get power of c# at your disposal. Been using it since version 5.0. The biggest issue in past was muticore, which ninja 8 solved.

 

[SteveH]

When someone says Ninja servers it makes
Me laugh. There are no servers, ninja sits on your own pc, server, cloud and etc. any connection issues have nothing to do with ninja.

Of course they have servers. They have a license server and an historical data server to name two. They probably have an execution log server as well.

 

[TheDawn]

When someone says Ninja servers it makes
Me laugh. There are no servers, ninja sits on your own pc, server, cloud and etc. any connection issues have nothing to do with ninja.

ninja is fantastic software, it is great for both live and automated trading. You get power of c# at your disposal. Been using it since version 5.0. The biggest issue in past was muticore, which ninja 8 solved.

When you execute trades using Ninja Trader, it goes through their server, all your codes, your instructions, orders, everything goes through their server and then they get sent to other brokers like IB to get executed.

 

[RedDuke]

When you execute trades using Ninja Trader, it goes through their server, all your codes, your instructions, orders, everything goes through their server and then they get sent to other brokers like IB to get executed.

They do if you use their brokerage of course. If you use IB gateway for example, it goes straight to IB from your PC.

 

[TheDawn]

They do if you use their brokerage of course. If you use IB gateway for example, it goes straight to IB from your PC.

Not if you use automated strategies. All the codes are executed on their servers.