I like Mirus Futures with NT. They are inexpensive. Quick to respond to e-mails and/or phone calls, but faster response with e-mails. Also, they sometimes even called me to remind me about roll over so I would not have a big truck coming to deliver actual product.
As for NT, I agree if you are doing some indicators and actual screen time trading ES, there is no better platform.
If you are programming and back testing, then you might want something else.
Also, the built in order management is really good in NT once you figure out how it works, plus NT seems to work as a front end with most brokers.
As for cost, once you go live (real money), you do need to pay for charting, but NT has different costs depending on how many months you want to pay in advance.
I could see some benefits to automating my strategy in the future in that I would not need to monitor the screen anymore, or the other solution may be to hire an intern to trade for me during times I rather be sleeping.
Quote from NetTecture:
VERY hard to say. NinjaTrader is WORKABLE as long as you do not get into automatics and / or are painfulyl aware of the idiotics. It is actually QUITE decent if you do charting + indicators mostly - simply because that is the strong part. TT Fix has overnight issues (caused by TT), so that MAY be irrelevant or a bad match.
MultiCharts is supposedly a better app, but we here go heavy into automatics.
It really depends. The problem here is that your question is like asking someone what food is good - those platforms all have at least SOME advantages, and if those are important for you....
THe good thing is that you do not need to know now. Open account, ask howard to set up something. Change if you do not like. Seriously. You are in for a surprise there - Deep Discount is not only cheap, it is by far for most people the best experience they ever had, support wise. Do NOT expect howard to teach you (remember, they are for people that know what they do), but all normal support things are TOTALLY perfect with them.
Then get a MultiCharts trial, I would say. Depends really how much automatism you want / need. I would wait for MC.NET - which is out of beta soon.
Great contributions; good thread. I like to see that from time to time on ET.
I know all of this (27+year full-time trader); BUT~~even some of the guys here responding can teach me a thing or two, something I wasn't quite so aware of.
Well, I got London to get ready for but wanted to pop back in the thread and give props.
So, funny story. I decided to try Ninjatrader because my methods are pretty simple to execute and it seemed like the best deal for what I needed. It has Basic charting and low fees per contract (my broker separates platform contract fees and their own) which are my most important consideration.
I was using the program for 2 days before I started having problems with it. It kept showing my entry price at a 3 tick loss the moment I entered into a position. This happened off and on for 2 days while I was emailing back and forth with customer service and sending them my logs.
Currently, I haven't been able to trade for 2 days (since this has gone over the weekend it's actually been a total of 4) and they still haven't figured out the problem. They say they are working on it.
I've had to close positions that would have been profitable already. They were suppose to have it fixed by today and customer service said they were still working on it with tech support.
TT (trading technologies) has a thing with ninjatrader where there can be problems holding past the close. I was aware of this but I've never held a position past 3:15 close and no one ever said anything about possible platform problems just trading during the night session.
So this is my first experience with futures so far, lol.
That being said, I love trading the emini and it feels easier to trade than stocks (better fills, smaller spread), so I'm not actually that upset right now considering all that is going on.
I do feel a change in platform is coming very quickly with all this nonsense.
NetTecture, I remembered your post today about ninjatrader and having problems. I figured I'd let other traders new to futures or contemplating using ninjatrader to know about this as well.
Quote from NetTecture:
VERY hard to say. NinjaTrader is WORKABLE as long as you do not get into automatics and / or are painfulyl aware of the idiotics. It is actually QUITE decent if you do charting + indicators mostly - simply because that is the strong part. TT Fix has overnight issues (caused by TT), so that MAY be irrelevant or a bad match.
MultiCharts is supposedly a better app, but we here go heavy into automatics.
It really depends. The problem here is that your question is like asking someone what food is good - those platforms all have at least SOME advantages, and if those are important for you....
THe good thing is that you do not need to know now. Open account, ask howard to set up something. Change if you do not like. Seriously. You are in for a surprise there - Deep Discount is not only cheap, it is by far for most people the best experience they ever had, support wise. Do NOT expect howard to teach you (remember, they are for people that know what they do), but all normal support things are TOTALLY perfect with them.
Then get a MultiCharts trial, I would say. Depends really how much automatism you want / need. I would wait for MC.NET - which is out of beta soon.
Could be the data provider, I use Zen-Fire. The other issues could be data corruption.
It sounds like you are using the ES. 1st I would reset your data to delete all old data, then from instrument manager I would get the ES Dec contract. Next save yourself a template if you are using any indicators. Next, if you are trading market hours, just use instrument setting instead of 24/7. Create a new chart, load the saved template.
Finally make sure you are using the Dec contract when entering in orders, and also use a limit order to get you into the trade, since you will lose at least 1 tick if you do a market order.
Quote from schulzey:
So, funny story. I decided to try Ninjatrader because my methods are pretty simple to execute and it seemed like the best deal for what I needed. It has Basic charting and low fees per contract (my broker separates platform contract fees and their own) which are my most important consideration.
I was using the program for 2 days before I started having problems with it. It kept showing my entry price at a 3 tick loss the moment I entered into a position. This happened off and on for 2 days while I was emailing back and forth with customer service and sending them my logs.
Currently, I haven't been able to trade for 2 days (since this has gone over the weekend it's actually been a total of 4) and they still haven't figured out the problem. They say they are working on it.
I've had to close positions that would have been profitable already. They were suppose to have it fixed by today and customer service said they were still working on it with tech support.
TT (trading technologies) has a thing with ninjatrader where there can be problems holding past the close. I was aware of this but I've never held a position past 3:15 close and no one ever said anything about possible platform problems just trading during the night session.
So this is my first experience with futures so far, lol.
That being said, I love trading the emini and it feels easier to trade than stocks (better fills, smaller spread), so I'm not actually that upset right now considering all that is going on.
I do feel a change in platform is coming very quickly with all this nonsense.
NetTecture, I remembered your post today about ninjatrader and having problems. I figured I'd let other traders new to futures or contemplating using ninjatrader to know about this as well.
You can also try Zumo, a division of Ironbeam. They have $0.50 commissions (so a round-trip with ES is $3.32) and they give you Firetip for free if you leave in the account at least $15000.
