it's like comparing Monsanto to food, or gold to the US dollar, or Bill Gates to Warren Buffet, or Jimmy Buffet to Warren Buffet, or Google to Yahoo, or Amazon to Barnes and Noble. The only thing it's not like comparing is a republican to a democrat. what we need is a good old fashioned atomic bomb. Just look at Japan, all you gotta do is drop one on them and they will show you the future. By the way, I am thinking about opening up a t shirt factory. It's about time we start competing again with Asia. Keep that in mind. If we ever stop funding public education, you can send one of your daugthers to me and I will pay for her elementary education in exchange for the 100,000 t shirts that she makes for me. We need to reivive the manufacturing base in America, and I'm not just talking about t shirts, I mean shoes and shorts, and who knows, maybe even someday TVs?
Thanks for the insight on my borderline noobish question. I've been using every single corner in Ninjatrader... while it is certainly not as comprehensive as BBP, there are allot of things to like about it, especially if one is only dealing with futures. I however don't like the numerous bugs (I've counted three or four minor ones and one huge one so far). It would also be nice if Ninja could utilize GPU's too - then any retail trader could truly datamine as hard as any firm, so longs as they dropped a few bucks on some Nvidia Tesla's. Not saying total curve fitting is the way to go, only that running several heavy calculations and coming up with clean and organized data buckets would narrow the institutional/retailer gap substantially. With CPU-only, especially on somewhat proprietary software below the user C# code, backtests and modest optimizations are only possible. I second the BBG addiction. Thanks also for the insight on how most only use 5-10% of the features... it's amazing to think a guy like Mike Bloomberg can become a billionaire owning 88+% of the company by creating some flashing numbers on a screen, but what a fantastic product!
Ninjatrader can't even do options or spreads. I only used it briefly several years ago, thus my experience might not be valid anymore, but it was full of bugs and froze/crashed frequently. No serious trader would use NT!
a couple of thoughts... re nt not doing options or spreads, i agree. it should only be used for futures. re the performance of the actual program, they continue to make improvements (nt 7 the latest release) is a lot better in terms of cpu resource utilization. re bbg, most users don't care how much it costs b/c they don't pay for it - the firm does. it's easy to be addicted to bbg if there are no downsides (like being locked into a 2 yr contract paying approx $2k a month). i've heard of only a few independent traders NEEDING bbg for what they do. most independent traders focus on one market (e.g. futures, options, stocks) and are able to access it w/o bloomberg. disclaimer: i DON'T work for bbg or nt. if you're still hesitant re nt for any reason either try it for free or worst case lease it for a month. if you want to trade from a chart there are a handful of quality front ends out there, nt being one of them (button trader, zeroline, bracket trader are three used primarily w/ ib). you just have to read the reviews and see which front end provides the features you need.
Bloomberg is not suitable for most daytraders, I agree. It's not that expensive, though. RTS, CQG, Stellar or TT Pro cost about the same as a Bloomberg base subscription . It's not just about the software, it's about the infrastructure. Server-side aggregation, .e.g. As far as I know, Ninjatrader still keeps OCO orders locally -- a disaster waiting to happen.
I have to agree that comparing the two is a bad idea in the first place and I chuckled loudly from many of the answers in this thread, especially oldtime. That said, I have to play the devil`s advocate and say that Ninjatrader have been a great platform for my needs as a discretionary futures day trader. I have used the licensed version for live trading for over a year now and never have it failed me during market hours. No freezes, no disconnect, no nothing. The only bug and annoyance I have experienced twice, is that my workspace disappeared when I opened it for the day, such that I had to set it up again, draw up new S/R lines, etc. I use Ninjatrader with Interactive Brokers TWS, such that if something should happen with NT, I can manage my orders directly with IB. If my main internet connection fails, I can access mobile TWS from 3G on my cell phone. If that fails, I have disaster stops placed by default. If that fails, I can call IB. If that fails, then f**k it all. It is true that OCO orders on NT are held locally, except with Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade. So yes, a disaster waiting to happen for those who have not done their homework knowing the limitations of their software/brokerage and use such strategies. Well aware of the limitations of NT, it still serves my current needs and I will continue using it until my experience proves otherwise or I need to expand my strategies beyond what NT can offer. Until then, I remain a not so serious trader. Kind regards.
Have you ever worked at a prop desk at a major bank? Have you heard of "seat charges," i.e. overhead a trader needs to earn back?