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Honestly, I dropped over a thousand for a Ninjatrader license. It really wasn't a good decision.
First, the commission rates even at lifetime are actually higher than other brokerages.
Second, their customer service is awful. Every time I've had basic questions about my account, etc. they've been a real pain to deal with...I don't think they've gotten the memo that this space is increasingly competitive and TONS of brokerages are offering cheaper prices, cheaper data, etc.
Example: at one point, I had an experimental account that fell below $500. I forgot about it because it isn't my primary trading account. Well, they just shut off the data without warning one day while charging me data fees for the whole month.
Another example: they don't accept ACH. When I called them, they said I either had to pay the $25 wire fee OR do a check. When I asked if that meant I had to mail them, they said 'that's how checks work.' HELLO? There is something called ACH. Welcome to the 21st century. I wouldn't mind paying $25 for a wire transfer IF their commissions were lower. But they're not.
Seriously, don't use Ninjatrader brokerage. The best way to do it is to just use your plugins, put some tools in there, etc. and use another company to actually trade.
Just an aside, most futures brokers don't accept ACH. It is because the "know your customer" regulations. I don't think I've ever had a futures brokerage that accept ACH for deposits.
I am sorry you have had a bad experience. Your experience is not the standard that we have set at NinjaTrader. I did just reply to your private message.
With respect to brokerages offering lower rates, I would caution you to ensure that you take all costs into consideration meaning...there are firms who break out commissions from clearing costs. Some FCM's charge $0.50 clearing per contract which is not always fully disclosed. NinjaTrader Brokerage does not charge this.
Disclosure: This communication is sent to you by NinjaTrader, LLC, a software development company which owns and supports all proprietary technology relating to and including the NinjaTrader trading platform.
The reason has nothing to do with KYC or the like, but with NACHA membership.
Without (direct) membership and compliance, institutions don't have ACH access.
With respect to ACH, I do have a tradestation futures account and can fund it with ACH. It is also an equities account so perhaps that is why.
The fact that I have to pay $25 a wire fee is not the primary issue. As of this morning, they still had not turned on my data feed. I had to call them at 5 AM my time to get them to do it. You'd think, since I added funds at 5 AM yesterday over wire and expressed frustration at the lack of market data, someone would have followed up. That's Ninjatrader though for you--that is has been my recent experience with their customer service.
A bigger issue is I spent over $1K on this license but I have to subscribe to Tradovate's market replay. Ninjatrader's Level 2 market replay data is almost always corrupt, which makes using it as a tool learning almost impossible. Apparently, they've known about this data corruption issue for almost a year but it hasn't been fixed.
If you spent over $1K on Adobe and a significant piece of its ability to edit images didn't work, would you be happy?
For some reason, in this business people don't hold vendors accountable for providing a product. In my experience, this is largely because of hopium and all the other emotional aspects of trading. They aren't buying a product, they are buying a hope.
This is year 3 for me. I am finally profitable on my other accounts. One thing that has shifted for me in my trading journey has been setting aside my hope that it works and starting to view it as a business. If I was starting a business and a vendor charged me $1K and didn't deliver what they said they were going to, I would hold them accountable.
When you throw the absence of a working market replay in with the higher commission rates, the only advantage I can see is the ninjatrader ecosystem.