Why does it lag when I attempt to move my stops or take profits on my ATM strategy?
Once they become yellow there is not way to adjust the order. Does anyone have insights into this.
I restart the platform and still run into the issue
First off all, never use the strategy analyzer, exotic bar types, minute data as the time series on backtest for scalping types of strategies. These simply can't handle the nuances of trading a few ticks and you will overstate your results by an order of magnitude.
Never check the fill limit order on touch box no matter what you do. This is the worst thing you can ever do.
In general throw away the strategy analyzer, this is dog shit. The only thing even close to reality is running market replay on a 1 tick time series and even this has serious limits and here they are:
There is 0 latency in execution of placing orders, filling orders and any time you use Ninjatrader to run a back test of any kind, you are basically seeing high frequency trading speed. 0 Latency, instant fills, and complete and utter fantasy. All this breaks down in live trading and it will absolute not reconcile whatsoever. The closer you get to a scalping type of strategy the worst the gap is. So to get a realistic simulation out of NinjaTrader you need to account for this by coding your own latency simulation. You need to seperate the act of catching the signal, and placing the order. When you get your alpha signal, you need to add the trade information to a queue along with the timestamp of when this happened, but you do not actually send the order. In the queue, you run a check on every tick to see if the current timestamp is > the signal timestamp + Your Latency Target. Once this is true, dequeue the order and place it. Realistically if you are using Ninjatrader live, even on a VPS in Chicago you will be 100 milliseconds during most of the US cash session best case. NinjaTrader is a charting software first and foremost, made with shitty .Net bloat that has so much garbage collection it will freeze your app every 50 milliseconds constantly. But seriously, if you want to get anywhere close to reality, especially if you are trying to scalp with this, you have to add a latency adjustment similar to what I described or you are just fucked.
You have to account for the ridiculous amount of fake positive slippage they give you on limit orders in all their backtests. Export Trades, and Orders in a spreadsheet and track the difference between the Limit order prices and the actual fill prices. In most cases the Limit order price (What you actually asked for in your strategy) is what you will get in real live trading. The actual fill prices they give you in backtesting is usually inflated by 25% to 50%. It's insane honestly looking at NQ, CL, ES, etc. You need to manually adjust this in a spreadsheet and only give yourself credit for the Limit order prices and not the fill prices.
The market orders / Stop losses, don't have enough slippage. You will need to add for example 5 dollars for MNQ on every order. You have to figure out the right settings for each instruments but it's 2-3 ticks on average across the board - unless you are dumb enough to try to trade quarterly earnings or FOMC or an event that AMP sets margins to 80% so you couldn't even trade it in the first place.... Then you will get murdered and most of your stop losses will get rejected and run for 100 points. Yep, this has happened to me several times. But the point of this post is getting a halfway accurate backtest, so I will taper off on this rant...
Don't ever mix the event handlers in the same strategy. OnBarUpdate front runs all the other methods. If you use GetCurrentBid() or GetCurrentAsk() for example from OnBarUpdate and mix this with OnMarketUpdate you can actually front run and look into the future. It's fucked, but you can actually glitch your way to a million dollars in backtesting. This is just about as bad as the fill limit orders on touch glitch.
But if you do the stuff I mentioned, you can get it in the ballpark. But without this, any type of scalping, or short term trading strategy will be off by an order of magnitude. If you are taking a few trades a day shooting for 100 points or something, then none of this really matters - but if you are one of the unlucky fools trying to figure out HFT with Ninjatrader, then 911!!!
I’ve been running NT8 on an older laptop. During high volatility the lag is unbearable. I’m seeing significant slippage on my entries and I don’t want a power outage or Windows update killing a live trade. It almost happened once already.
Need a VPS for NinjaTrader 8 that offers low latency to Chicago CME and at least 16GB of RAM. Also need it to handle multiple charts and automated strategies. When I do a Google search,
I’m seeing NinjaMobileTrader, ChartVPS, and TraderVPS listed as the top options.
Which one do you prefer and why? Interested in specs and monthly costs.
I put together a free NinjaTrader watchdog script package for anyone running automated or semi-automated strategies on NinjaTrader 8.
It’s a local Windows PowerShell toolkit that can:
Important note: your NinjaScript strategy needs to write a simple heartbeat text file while it runs. The download includes a copy/paste NinjaScript heartbeat snippet and setup instructions for that.
You’ll also need to customize things like your NinjaTrader path, monitor/window placement, strategy heartbeat path, and the click offset for the Enabled checkbox.
It’s free and runs locally on your own machine:
https://trade-reign.com/ninjatrader-watchdog
Obvious disclaimer: test it on sim/demo first. It uses UI automation, so screen layout matters, and the heartbeat file is what tells the watchdog your strategy is still alive.
Tired of copy/pasting your password every time? I wrote this small NT8 autologin.
I built a simple autologin setup for NinjaTrader 8 for people who don’t want to run random executables on a trading PC.
How it works:
Setup.bat once → small window opens, enter your email and password, done.Login.bat instead of the normal NT shortcut → launches NinjaTrader and logs you in automatically.Why it’s safe:
Finds NinjaTrader automatically even if installed outside default path.
After launching Login.bat, don't touch mouse/keyboard for a few seconds while it finds the login window and types your password.
Tested on NT8 standard installation, Windows 10/11. Feedback welcome, especially non-standard setups.
I’m building a trading simulator focused specifically on SMC/ICT concepts instead of generic paper trading.
The idea is to practice things like:
Instead of just placing random buy/sell trades, the simulator would train pattern recognition and execution based on ICT-style models.
Some features I’m thinking about:
I’m trying to figure out if traders would genuinely use something like this consistently, or if most people would still prefer TradingView replay + manual journaling.
What would make an app like this actually valuable to you?
And what features would instantly make you ignore it?
Hello. I am having difficulty posting this at NT8 forum so I am posting it here. I have a long list of ATM strategy for different entry models. I am wondering if there is a way to create a tab or folder for each entry model in the chart trader for atm strategies for under each model. Please let me know if you found a solution for this. It is difficult to be doing calculations and changes while in a trade because sometimes before I can change my take profit, it already went to it within the same minute entry. An example is I have 10 pt SL, with one strategy my TP1 is 2r, with another strategy it is 3r. By the time I move it to 3r, it already went to 3r and back up.
Have all features exactly like bookmap...
Comment your thoughts here
After buying the lifetime membership what happens? How much additional money will be needed? I don’t understand if we get an allowance everyday incase the account goes negative? Or do we use our own money and this membership accounts for contract fees and usage of the software and I the end user out additional money for trading contracts? I trade MNQ on top step and that’s what I currently understand. Should I make the switch? Any insights and experience is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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What kind of bottlenecks exist if you’re trying to run NinjaTrader without native Windows hardware? I know NT is Windows-only, but I’m a die-hard Mac person and refuse to let a Windows machine into my house. As far as I can tell, the options seem to be parallels or some kind of remote VPS setup. I do not care if my charts are pretty, but I DO care very much about reliability of execution and latency. I don’t want to have random freezes mid-session.
Spent a few months building this for my NQ/GC scalping — finally cleaned it up enough to share.
What it does:
Volume Profile + VWAP (POC, VAH, VAL, HVN/LVN) with clean session logic
Large Trade Sweep Detector (auto thresholds, multiple marker styles)
Cumulative Delta (CVD) with absorption/exhaustion/divergence
Confluence Engine
10-factor scoring (flow, VA location, VWAP/POC alignment, divergences, etc.)
RSI “price-level” gate to avoid counter-trend entries
CMF confirmation bonus
Optional ATR trailing stop
Outputs ▲/▼ signals with score + SL/TP levels
Why I built it:
Was juggling 4+ tools and still second-guessing entries. Wanted one system that scores confluence and stays quiet otherwise.
Caveats: NT8 only
Best on liquid futures (NQ/ES/GC/CL)
Needs tuning — not plug-and-play alpha
Built it for myself first. Curious if others here would actually use something like this or see flaws in the approach. If you are interested in demo DM i can share code.
I hope this makes sense, but this has been driving me crazy. You see how I'm in a trade...I can drag my stop loss and take profit up and down on the side, BUT I CANNOT SEE THE HORIZONTAL LINE ACROSS THE WHOLE CHART. All I see is that blue line of where I got in. Please tell me how to change the settings so I can visually see the TP and SL on the chart, not just off to the side. I have googled a thousand times I don't know what I'm missing. The option to do this isn't in the chart settings either.