"Serious automated trading it starts falling apart" - sheepsucker I have been using Ninjatrader and Multicharts for several

years. With NT I mostl y associate frustration. Once you start developing seriously you start running into bugs, oddities and li mitations which you are forced to spend time working around. eg. backtest on BID/ASK, just doesnt work reliably. Impossible to get the same backtest results as in Multicharts. Which has been ve rified to reflect reality. For discretionary traders NT can work though. But if you want to trade automated , avoid it and you will avoid lots of frustration with the software and the customer service. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------Ok, Ninjatrader has it's problems. There are many things they could improve like storing the bid/ask data correctly because all backtesting is giving false results for the moment. BUT I have to be honest and tell you their support is awesome. You can only emai l them and don't call them up, but they respond to all questions on the day itself, eve n in the weekends. Really kudos to the ninjatrader team for putting up such a great support. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------I started using NinjaTrader almost 5 years ago, back in the days of NT6.5, and w as quite satisfied. Then, when NT7 came out in public beta, I jumped aboard. The early NT7 releases had some issues that have now been fixed, and the current version (7.0.1000.6) is rock solid. Everything about NT6.5 that was good is now great in NT7. Multiseries (mixing di fferent instruments/timeframes) charts, indicators, and strategies all work very well. The strategy limitations imposed by NT6.5 have been lifted in the unmanaged stra tegy mode, where you have literally endless possiblility to code the strategy ex actly how you see fit - NT7 will not get in your way here. ******************************************************************************** ******* Although unsupported, I've even managed to chart and trade some exchange spreads (RB-CL and oil calendar spreads) on Zen-Fire by crafting some unique symbol mapp ings. ******************************************************************************** ******* -----------------------------------------------------------------------------Yes there are issues that everyone has with any software, but for the money and ease of use. It's the best thing that I've come across and it's free to try out. I've used Tradestation, Trade Navigator, Sierra charts, and Ensign charts. And as I'm developing /porting my system for other charting packages, I find that ot hers are trying to copy NinjaTrader's unique functionality which tells me that N

injaTrader really has something. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------The great idea but unfortunate execution. Similar to Sierra Charts. Geeks in charge of trading software is a pity story. Objectively. NT is flexible in programming but doesnt delivery much as it is lim ited by its architecture (ie bid ask split and 1 sec timestamps, memory problems , cpu problems etc). It is good compared to other amateurish packages. Its best value though it is spreading fast on future markets. Hopefully they will be bought out by a professional trader and the real job will be done. Now - a bizzare nature artifact... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------"Doesn't make use of multi-cores for auto trading" - xiaohu Just realized from the support forums that in actual trading, all automated stra tegies run on a single main thread. So my multi-core CPUs are not taken advantage of. Extremely disappointed. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------******************************************************************************** ****************************** But there's a problem: if you're an IB customer you can't trade CL and some othe r energy futures with NT 6.5 and the recommended version of TWS because NT refuses to update their IB API sup port to current specs on the release branch. You have to use NT 7 beta, which is sadly not production quality. ******************************************************************************** ****************************** -----------------------------------------------------------------------------This software is useless. Stock with Interactive Brokers order entry and save yo urself the agony. There is a reason they don't have a month to month subscription the reason is af ter a day or two you relaize what a piece of junk it is. Now I'm sure since they are a sponser of ET that after this rating there will be a glowing write up. Trust me save your money. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------I have a love/hate relationship with Ninjatrader. The DOM is the best I've seen (but I haven't tried x-trader). However for charting it's totally unstable. If y ou have more than 4 or 5 charts and DOMS (basically if you trade several markets ) it'll often freeze up for periods of time when there is a lot of market activi ty. The charting is totally unstable. It's constantly freezing and crashing. It

often takes me 2-3 tries to get it started without freezing, having to use task manager to kill it. Sometimes I open a new chart and it'll freeze. When their hi storical data server goes offline then any backfill will freeze the entire appli cation and you have to kill it. This is totally unacceptable. The solution from support is to wipe out the database and start over, losing all my trade history and instrument settings. No thank you. If you're trading just one or two markets with a couple charts it'll work fine. if you try to trade more than that good luck. for backtesting, it routinely crashes as it consumes up to 1gig of memory. it's also very slow. the main advantage is it's free. if you want to dork around then this is it. onc e you get serious about trading you'll quickly discover its limitations. my curr ent plan is to use another software for charting and ninja only for the DOM. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------Using it now. First thing first: it works well as long as you do not use it to automate. Worth the Money Using it now. First thing first: it works well as long as you do not use it to automate. Then thigns get nasty. * Backtesting is not worth the usage for smaller timefram es - it hogs memory and crashes, and hs no "per tick" simulation, which somteims means that trailing stops can not be evaluated (as they are only evaluated on a per bar approach, contrary to live trading). * It is a memory hog. Sadly, memor y is limited in 32 bit applications, which puts it between a rock and a hard pla ce (and into a crash). NT7 supposedly has a lot lower memory consumption due to a new architecture. But is still out many months. * Usability is partially nice, partially stinks. Sorry. Too many windows (why not one window with multiple con trols - definitely would be a lot less clutter in the start bar, which sadly - u sing 3-4 screens - has a LOT too many individual windows, some with no usable na me ("T&S" for time and sales - no symbol indicator - i have half a dozen of thos e). * UI runs one thread. Point. That sucks if a real time T&S overloads the oth er windows during spikes, or when - what I also had - suddenly most of hte windo ws freeze, because there is a data load going on for some reason that never stop s. * Using automated strategies and manual trading on one symbol does not work well, it dues, jsut be sure you never manipulate the orders from the strategy ( like with a "close all" button press) because the strategy will assume the order s are in.... and be out of control. Same after a connection loss.... strategies stop. Ouch - for those of us who get a DSL reset once per day. Great softare in concept, could need some serious work to be a lot better. Lof o f that coming with NT7 supposedly - out... hm... maybe next year ;) Until then: The worst software I continue using. Still making money with it, though. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------The strategy backtesting works well, and the wizard allows you to generate strat egies without knowing a single bit of C#. Oh and to those worried about it phoning home and stealing your strategies, I've

sniffed the packets and all it does is send a simple HTTP request to their serv ers. It doesn't send much information other than your license number. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------I love the price matrix for trading the e-minis. It's very user friendly and rel iable. The charting is sub par compared to others like TradeStation. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------Negatives: 1) If you use TTFIX and hold a position overnight your position data in NinjaTrader is incorrect and should not be relied upon. 2) Lackluster memory utilization means that you won't be able to run many tick-based strategies and c harts at the same time. 3) Backtesting w/tick data is very inefficient as every tick must be loaded into memory. There is an apparent memory leak which requires you to shut down and restart NT after just a few backtests. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------NT 6.5 crashes all the time and in general is unreliable if you have open a lot of tick/range charts and write your own strategies. The backtesting is a major r esource hog and crashes frequently, especially with tick data. Still, it is the best available and NT 7 which is due out very soon promises to fix a lot of shortcomings. If you are a programmer then NT 7 is really the only way to go, giving you a full C# library of commands plus its own built in wizard to get you started. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------Well...hard to believe but NINJA TRADER is not supporting ICE, no way to trade T F (mini Russell. Ninja Trader is proving very poor, a joke, not a real trading p latform. The solution is to stop using Ninja Trader and swich to a serious platform. I agree with jimmyrey about some poor performance/programming of NT - they must improve their platform. Also NT platform is very primitive regarding the time intervals you can use. No way to use 2 or 4 or 8 hours for example, or 90 minutes, etc. If in addition of daytrading you swing trade, you are out of luck with NT because next day you wil l have no information what open positions you have. Not a serious platform -----------------------------------------------------------------------------Not necessarily good for day trading stocks... excellent for futures. Best is to combine with a reliable datafeed such as TT or ZenFire.