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What does everyone think for the cqg feed provided through Ninjatrader. Is it just like the feed that CQG provides to its clients at $2100/month or what the difference?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
It's the same feed. CQG charges ~ $795+ (~ $1,100 nicely equipped) for their CQG Integrated Client platform, not the feed itself. You can also use their CQG Trader, or CQG Lite platforms, which also utilize the same feed, for less money as well (ticket charges and a monthly cap vs a flat monthly rate). The problem, in my opinion, is NinjaTrader. It is not stable enough, and it is not fast enough. Of course, it likely is suitable for most retail traders.
When you say fast enough? Do you notice a tick delay in the data from the CQG NinjaTrader compared to the native CQG platform? Is the speed thing more because you are buying and selling really quick? My personal strat. doesn't depend a lot on speed considering I have orders in a while before price gets to my order I just need accurate tick data. IE I've noticed my ticks between Tradestation and Ninjatrader are off by one most of the time. NT seems faster to me than TS.
NinjaTrader can get unstable if the chart update interval goes below 200ms (5Hz). In fact, NinjaTrader only allows you to go as low as 100ms (10Hz). Some platforms update in "real-time" or at least much faster intervals. Sierra Chart, for the sake of comparison, allows refresh intervals of up to 40ms (25Hz); which, obviously, is much faster than NinjaTrader. Sierra Chart is also far more stable and resource efficient from my personal experience.
If your methodology does not rely on lightning fast data delivery, then you would probably be OK with most retail feeds and platforms. However, anybody that trades, in any capacity, should be concerned about stability. NinjaTrader does not have the best reputation in that arena. Let me put it this way: No professional trader (that I personally know) uses, or would use NinjaTrader. Just sayin....
It's ultimately up to the user to decide what suits them.
Would I be correct (if you know) that CQG via NT means orders (stop/limit etc) are not held at the exchange ?
(Which, if so, may also be a consideration.).
I believe such orders are sent/held at any exchange that supports it. What I am less sure of, is whether the NinjaTrader/CQG marriage allows for server-side OCO. The absense of this feature, alone, would be a deal-breaker for me. Something to look into for certain. Server-side OCO should be possible, presuming the CQG Trader API (of which NinjaTrader interfaces), supports it. If so, the question then is whether NinjaTrader/AMP Trading bothered to implement it?
This will end up a bit off topic, but I'll field the question....
I have used CQG's feed and it is quite good. As good as I have seen. CTS has proven itself, to me, to be every bit as good as CQG in terms of speed, reliability, and accuracy (save for their second tier Eurex implementation), and is cheaper. CQG Integrated Client, equipped for my needs, runs about $1,100/month all in. CTS T4 + Sierra Chart (both using CTS data, of course) offers me more features (certain chart types that are not available in CQG Integrated Client) for a price of about $535/month all in. Like CQG Integrated Client, the CTS T4 + Sierra Chart combination is rock solid in stability and reliability, which is more than I can say for NinjaTrader, from my personal experience with it.
And no, I have no affiliation/association with any vendor, of any kind. Just being clear.
I personally don't know about the server sided order or client side, but I will ask the president of AMP futures monday morning. I'm am interested in this Sierra charts that you talk about. I really don't know that much about it. If I understand some other forums correctly. Sierra is built on .NET. which is cool for C# programmers. However, the first and last time I used opened up sierra I felt like I was opening up an old windows 3.1 program. I didn't 'feel' it and as I recalled switching markets was way to long of a process for me. So I left it. I will definitely look at it again. Has it changed at all in the last 2 years?
Talking about the chart display update interval of NinjaTrader is completely irrelevant. OnBarUpdate() processes incoming ticks much faster and so does the DOM. The chart update interval is only used to to redraw the active charts for visual information. That is just the screen output.
Why would I want to set a display update interval to 100 msec. I do not require that my chart updates 10 times per second. Trading is not a video game and I am not sitting in front of my screens with a joystick!
A display update interval of 500 msec is more than enough. Further reducing the display update interval draws on the CPU without any benefits, so why should I do that? I am not astonished that you run into stability problems.