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choosing the right platform for trading and backtesting
I am looking for a trading platform for futures trading and I would also like to deal intensively with BackTesting and hope that one or the other of you can give me some tips. I have a future account at Ninjatrader brokerage.
I've read quite a few reviews and comparisons, but it's like BMW vs DAIMLER or McDonals vs BurgerKing or Android vs iOS or ... I am aware that I have to invest a lot of time and steep learning curves and of course I will, but I want to jump on a well-known and well supported product in the first place and not buy an old mule. The best known and biggest products in the field I would have come across:
NinjaTrader, SierraChart, MultiCharts and maybe even TradeStation. I have also read about TradeSignal, not sure if this fits into that comparison pool. In the order I mentioned them here, taken from the statistics/popularity here from the forum.
From the reviews from various pages and posts here in the forum I could see that BackTesting at NinjaTrader would not be that great and accurate. I don't understand why, because as far as I know, NT also allows you to run a market replay and the fills are displayed and added to the performance book.
Q: Which product is better for Backtesting: SierraChart, MultiCharts or Ninjatrader8 or xxx ? which one would you suggest and why?
Q: Which trading platform would the experienced traders among you recommend and why?
I am a new user and have opened a future account at Ninjatrader Brokerage with the free live license. Unfortunately I have to make the experience that this license is totally restricted and does not even allow chart trading. I cannot even place an OCO order. From other trading platforms and brokers I am used to all chart trading and also OCO orders. I always place a limit order (sometimes also a stop order) for entry, but at the same time and in advance I already define the stop loss and take profit. Unfortunately this is impossible in the Ninjatrader free license. I have to open a position first and then enter two more orders manually for SL and TP. This is unacceptable in future trading.
Referring to Ninjatrader8, since I don't want to buy the cat in a bag, I'm not willing to pay the high costs for the lifetime license. Finally I read dozens of topics here in the forum from dissatisfied Ninjatrader users who turned their backs on NT and switched to other platforms. Often they advertise here in the forum and try to sell their expensive license used.
So I am currently in the situation that I must choose my future trading platform carefully. Is it possible to use SierraChart or MultiCharts for trading in connection with my Ninjatrader Brokerage account or are they just programs for charting and backtesting? In case I go away from Ninjatrader8 but stay and Ninjatrader-Brokerage, will I be able to connect SierraCharts or MultiCharts or eSignal or ... to my NTB account for futures trading?
The other cons about Ninjatrader brokerage is, that there is no mobile app available. I often use the mobile apps of my other existing brokers (which I am still connected to). Not having the option to deal from the mobile phone is a deal braker so my question is: is there really no possibility to manage my NTB account from the mobile phone? will it be possible when using SierraCharts, MultiCharts, or any other trading platform?
What would you recommend and why? I am looking forward to your comments. Many thanks in advance.
TradeStation is an easier choice. They give you historical data and waive the platform fee if your account is larger than $100k (maybe they have lowered that lately, call them for most up-to-date info). Their brokerage service is decent, support is pretty good, and their forum has been active and provides a lot of gems. Currently they are on version 10, but a lot of people (me included) think 9.5 is better.
The cons with TradeStation: you are locked to one broker if your goal is automated trading; backtesting and optimization can be slow (don't know why).
MultiCharts is superior in its speed of backtesting and optimization. It is very stable. You can choose from a list of supported brokers. But you have to find data feed if you need backtesting with a long history of data.
Both TradeStation and IB have mobile apps (at least on Android).
Sierra Chart is a fine platform, but from my understanding, it is mostly for discretionary traders. It is a hard to do strategy optimization with it.
Very good questions, and some are hard to answer, and some may be easy to answer, but not by me . I have past experience with the NinjaTrader platform and current experience with Sierra Chart and will basically just address these two.
To begin with, I have no experience with backtesting, so cannot discuss this, other than to say that both NT and Sierra Chart say they can do it in their documentation. But I can't add anything here.
Some are simpler for me to deal with:
Broker issues: NinjaTrader Brokerage is what is called an Introducing Broker (an "IB"). An Introducing Broker "introduces" customers to another type of company, called FCM's (Futures Commission Merchants). In a sense, the FCM is your true "broker," in that they actually hold your money and your trades actually go through them. Your Introducing Broker also handles any customer or trade-related support issues you may have, but they can only resolve them by working with your FCM. Many firms function in both roles, and you can open an account with them directly without going through an Introducing Broker.
If you have a Ninja Brokerage account, your FCM (for futures anyway) will be either Phillip Capital or Dorman Trading. You made the selection when you opened the account, and you opened an account with one of them.
How does this affect you? NinjaTrader Brokerage only lets you use the NinjaTrader platform, and, with the exception of a very small number of other firms, it is the only broker that is permitted to offer NinjaTrader as a platform. So you are somewhat tied to them. (If you check the NT website, you can find the other firms that use the NT platform. A major one is Interactive Brokers, but otherwise there are not many.) Obviously, you can use NT at both Dorman or Phillip, since you already are . ) I believe both Phillip and Dorman accept Sierra Chart, which presents an opportunity, perhaps.
According to the Sierra Chart documentation, if you have an NT Brokerage account, you can connect to whichever of these firms you have your FCM account with, using Sierra Chart. It's been a while since I read this, so you will need to check the Sierra Chart web site for details. I do not know how NT Brokerage would feel about this, if you needed to have a broker issue resolved and only had the NT support contact info.
But basically, if you use NinjaTrader platform, you are getting married to the NinjaTrader Brokerage, or at least that's their intention. Most other platforms (except TradeStation, which is also an FCM) can be used with many brokers.
There is basically no particular reason to use NT Brokerage unless you want to use the NT platform to trade with. Many other brokers will let you connect and trade with other platforms (but usually not the NT platform), including Sierra Chart.
NT Licensing: You don't have to accept the limited free version, nor the expensive lifetime edition. You can lease a fully-functional version for $180 for a three-moth period (if I recall correctly.) This would give you time to get used to it and decide if it is something you want. I believe their web site says this is for "only $60 per month," which is correct, but you have to pay for three months. It will let you do the normal OCO type trading, and all the other normal trading you may be used to.
Mobile apps: Both NT8 and SC were designed as desktop applications, and they run that way. There are platforms, some tied to one broker, some available with several, that are designed for mobile use. My impression, not based on using them unfortunately, is that platforms meant for mobile use probably are not robust enough to do backtesting. But others will have to make suggestions and comments there.
However, remember that you have an account with a broker, not with a platform. So it is possible for your broker to offer both a desktop platform and also a different application that connects to your broker account as well, so you would be using one platform for one purpose, and another for a different one. These are broker questions, so you will need to address them with a particular broker you are interested in. NT Brokerage is not one one of them, however.
My preference in platforms, between NT8 and Sierra Chart, is SC, hands down. The main reason is performance and completeness. However, SC will prove to be a more difficult platform to learn and to be able to use to its full potential. Another, very important reason is that SC is not tied to one broker, so you could move your account, if you had reason to, or choose between different brokers, while still using the same platform.
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You can see the complexity of the issues you have raised. I hope you find the information you need to make a good decision.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
To try to fill in on the topics I do not have the experience to address, I would refer you to the posts of several users who I know have extensive experience in backtesting, (I assume you mean for algrorithmic systems):
@kevinkdog has already weighed in for TradeStation, up above. I would take his recommendations very seriously.
@JonnyBoy has extensive experience in bascktesting with NT8. I do not think he agrees about NT not being great for this task.
@vmodus has done a lot of backtesting in TradeStation, and has recently moved to MultiCharts. I think he as also mentioned using Sierra Chart, but I don't know if he has used it for backtesting.
There are many others, of course, but these are names that came to mind. You can use the Search function at the top of every page to find posts and treads by them (use Advanced Search and specify the username), as well as by others who address the topic.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
@patricia feel free to PM me if you have TradeStation or MultiChart questions. @kevinkdog, a/k/a Kevin Davey, has a body of written work (and course on strategy development) that speaks for itself, and which I recommend.
this would be a deal braker. I like freedom and always want to be able to choose and switch. So TradeStation is removed from the selection list.
Currently i would count myself among the discretionary traders but i would like to go in the direction of system trading hence the wish to start with backtesting and dive into algo trading (although I know this requires a steep learning curve).
But I am surprised by the statement that SierraChart should not be suitable for strategy optimization. From everything I have read so far on the internet and in forums about MultiCharts and SierraCharts, these two mentioned products are the aces in the category of charting and backtesting. Leaving aside the professional software Motivewave, which is probably used by constitutional traders or even very large account sizes. At least that's the impression I got while searching the internet in the last weeks, of course I would like to be proven wrong.
@vmodus: what was the reason you decided to switch to MultiCharts and not to SierraCharts? can you give some examples, please?
@bobwest: thanks a lot for your detailled explanation. I am aware about the fact that Ninjatrader brokerage is an introducing broker, my FCM is PCAP. The only reason I did choose NTB was the low margin. There's no other way I could deal with futures currently because my account/balance is not high enough. As soon as I will have the 'right' account balance that suit the needs I will switch to Interactive Brokers which definitely is my favorite one. Currently I trade with NTB because of the very low margin. I couldn't afford to deal at Interactive Brokers because of the required margin.
As you said, the good thing when choosing eg SierraChart is that I can connect to my existing NTB/PCAP account. If you visit that PhillipCapital page you will see that PCAP supports SierraChart. Does that mean I can use with my NTB/PCAP account ? I'm asking because this [AUTOLINK]SierraChart[/AUTOLINK] information is confusing me.
Ninjatrader might be a nice platform but I am not willing to invest such a high amount for testing it even not in a lease model. As said before, I have red tons of former Ninjatrader users who left NT because they were not satisfied and they have regret having invested such a high amount into that platform. I have used a lot (!) of various brokers in the past 15 years and all of them provided a full-working solution, means I was able to use chart trading, ATM strategies and even more complex features. I didn't have to pay extra for such basic functions. I hate it to experience that NinjaTrader live license does not even allow me to enter a position by a OCO order with a given Stop-Loss and Take-Profit level, although I am using a Ninjatrader brokerage account and thus am a NT customer. Instead they wanna charge me and force me to BUY the Ninjatrader suite. No matter if it's the lifetime license or a lease model, this is a no-go in my humble opinion. I already contacted and asked about possibly offers, referal programs or similar but no chance. They do not offer anything, they only say I have to buy or lease their software. That being said leads me to leave them as soon as possible. However, luckily there are other platforms and brokers available, hence this thread and my question.
Does anyone know for sure if MultiCharts works with NinjatraderBrokerage or not? For what I see on MultiChart webpage here and THIS info page NTB is not mentioned at all. So MultiCharts is not compatible with NinjaTrader Brokerage (Phillip Capital) ? would be nice if anyone knows for sure and can prove this.
On the basis of this forum post one gets the impression that SierraCharts is probably ahead and better than MultiCharts. So I am thinking about to try SierraCharts and see if this will suit my needs. In case I could use it with my existing NTB/PhillipCapital account it would be nice to try. As soon as I will leave NTB and switch to InteractiveBrokers I have much more freedom and all possibilites to choose my favorite trading platform as InteractiveBrokers is supported by all of them.
Sierra:
I use SC for analysis only. I like to get away from TS and MC for a different perspective. I often get inspiration in Sierra Charts, then see if I can get those ideas to work in TradeStation. It is very fast, responsive and stable. It has a ton of configuration options, which makes the learning curve pretty steep.
TradeStation:
I use TradeStation for futures trading for several reasons:
We have TradeStation Securities accounts, so the platform is basically free
We have a ton of custom code built with EasyLanguage, including all of our trading strategies
We are pretty good at developing code in EasyLanguage
MultiCharts:
We use MultiCharts for forex only, at the moment. MC has some major advantages over TradeStation (MultiCharts grew out of the same codebase as TradeStation): 64-bit execution, very fast, better Monte Carlo analysis, faster strategy optimizations, active community, excellent documentation. Other reasons for using MultiCharts (over TS):
Ability to port our EasyLanguage to PowerLanguage, which are almost 100% compatible
Vendor independent (broker, data, etc.), with built-in support for a variety of brokers and data feeds
Frustration over TradeStation crashes (multiple issues spanning multiple years...too many to list here)
We haven't moved totally over to MultiCharts, but would like to at some point in the future. Between SC and MC, I think MC broker and data feed configuration is a lot easier for most users. I got my OANDA account and data feed setup in about 5 minutes, for example.
Most of my experience is with TradeStation so Im aware of their many issues with backtesting. If you have the programming skills I would suggest coding your own back tests in python. You can easily use TradeStation or yahoo finance dats. If you find a strategy that tests well with both methods you will likely have something worth considering. Big if.
. I have past experience with the NinjaTrader platform and current experience with 
It will let you do the normal OCO type trading, and all the other normal trading you may be used to.
