giles117 ( or anyone) I've checked out Ninja Trader a little and seen some of their webinars. Is it common for most future's trading software to be set up the NT way, that is setting up/placing orders directly on the DOM. This makes a lot of sense to me. Chart on the left, DOM on the right, of the monitor. (Medved Quote Tracker and Sierra Charts are very popular at the ET reviews. Been to their sites but haven't checked them out in any real way. Does anyone know off-hand if these 2 packages are very similar to NT as far as placing orders on a DOM while viewing a chart?) thanks for any comments, -Stephen
austinp, Thanks for your suggestion. Given the recent news about Farr and Velocity Futures and how they manage/'risk' their customers funds, is there any information about how Mirus invests the customers liquidity? Bernard
A better question would be how does Dorman invest their money. Mirus is just an IB, Dorman is whom they clear through. Dorman is pretty big as you can see in the pdf. Everything has it's pros and cons, trading is no different. One of the reasons I left Mirus for Velocity is better trade desk support, but as we can see they both have their pros and cons. I am happy to hear Velocity is giving me my money tomorrow pronto, with no hassles. At the time I left Mirus they had 1 on the trade desk. Under normal conditions no problem, if an exchange goes down, big problems with them getting phone bombed.
And currently?...how's staffed Mirus desk? It's strange austinp gave very good rate about them recently.
I don't know you would have to ask them. Austin and I have chatted on Mirus and he doesn't see it as an issue, I potentially do, in certain circumstances. They are really nice ppl. though and Zen Fire is a very good feed. I have not been with them for over a year, so things probably have changed. I would hope that they now would have 2 on trade desk during RTH. Mirus is a good firm, I just don't like their $$$ for commissions and in the past they had 1 on trade desk, that's all. They think Zen Fire is so much better than anything else and I don't see a difference really from TT in my experience. Faster than Trans Act yes, but I don't scalp anymore so it doesn't matter.
Yes also: http://www.ampfutures.com/ninja_trader.html AMP FUTURES IS AN IB GUARANTEED BY DORMAN TRADING LLC Clearer is always Dorman for Zen-Fire
<i>"Austin and I have chatted on Mirus and he doesn't see it as an issue, I potentially do, in certain circumstances..."</i> dandxg, that's because you have a lot more money than me! In my case, I never keep large sums of money with any type of broker. Even before the Refco fiasco, I have limited trust of any financial entity. That goes for the publicly traded ones like IB and TradeStation imo, too. We saw Enron and WCM go belly up... public listing means nothing to me. One luxury of an emini daytrader is daytrade margin levels. I can keep bulk of cash in the bank, limited amount with a broker and trade it accordingly. Hit a drawdown? Wire necessary funds from safety of a bank into broker account. Simple as that for me. Swing = position traders and stock traders require more capital on hand = at risk than emini day traders. So that's one part of the overall picture for me. Limited funds with any broker, no exception. * Mirus in particular have always handled my phone calls immediately, even near the open and during fast market conditions. I would assume they have similar support staff per x-number of client accounts as any other broker. If Velocity for random hypothetical example is ten times the size of Mirus in client accounts, it would require ten times the desk staff to be equally available during crisis periods. Agreed? So... I personally view any brokerage as a place to park minimal necessary cash to operate the trading business. Said broker must have acceptable levels of phone support to help extricate me from a mess (within reason) when online link between home and the exchange is out. Mirus meets those two minimum demands of mine very well, and Ninja = zenfire is a great software platform to use. Let me restate I have zero affiliation with any broker, and receive no credit / benefit from opinions shared
Mirus actually has another FCM affiliation - RCG (Rosenthal Collins Group). A huge and reputable FCM. All funds are held in Harris Bank. I chatted with RCG this morning, and they highly recommened Mirus. I spoke with Mirus few months back, and they told me the following about zen fire speed superiority: "Do not take our word for it, just put TT and Zenfire next to each other and observe".
Zen Fire is all about the API to the exchanges, Zen is using the Linux based connection for the fastest data and order throughput while TT is on a different style connection to exchange API. Finally some competition for the TT crew who want to take 10 cents out of each traders pocket per contract traded.