Jura 

That is indeed an annoyance. Might be related to this Project Management issue: MC-1081 - Provide a workaround for detecting changes in functions, but sadly, I don't know a workaround for this.

Roger that and there are other (what I would consider minor) annoyances, e.g., chart trading occasionally does not show open/historical orders when turned on until the workspace is closed and reopened.

patbateman 

That data is not great. Yes NT supports it, but it is not tick data. NT also has free EOD data anyways. You can download lots of data from this website, or from demo feeds.

Hi patbateman,

Can you elaborate a little bit more ? As far as I see, neither NT nor Multicharts (or anything else, to be honest, other than AmiBroker) does not support a direct connection to either google finance or something else with free intraday. It may seem possible to load intraday from ASCII files, but not take it directly.

Thx

rienno 

I search the book review from Amazon.com and Google, found a lot of C# book with good comment. But most of the name of book is C# with .NET, only the book C# 4.0 in a Nutshell doesn't with .NET I am a beginner in programming, if I only need to write something for the trading platform like upcoming Multicharts.NET, do I need to learn the .NET as well? Thanks!!!

Well, why don't you use powerLanguage?
BTW, are you from HongKong. I am also from HK and new to MC with Algo trading.

avfx 

I'd rather have my strategy in it's own executable and use MC.NET as a library and visualization service.

I like this approach as well. I am a professional programmer evaluating trading platforms. There appear to be limitations, gotcha's with all of the retail products in regards to backtesting and live trading. What I really need is just a good visualization platform that I can plug into. I'm wondering if NT can be used as just a visualization tool. An interesting thought considering there is a free version.

bnichols 

For the record previously a diehard NT user I bought the MC bundle last year some time after .Net was released and started using MC immediately, which meant converting my custom indicators from NT C# to PowerLanguage (which meant learning PowerLanguage). Recently I started using MC .Net almost exclusively, mainly for the programming flexibility (specifically want to read files and interface to C# DLLs) and am in the process of converting custom indicators to PowerLanguage .Net (MC .Net's version of C#/VB). I found MC's documentation sparse compared to NT's documentation (mainly a dearth of examples) although there are enough EasyLanguage examples on the internet (including NexusFi (formerly BMT)) that I was never at a total loss. Not having a TradeStation subscription makes some things harder than they need to be, like maintaining reasonably up-to-date versions of ELCollections and ADE. I'm finding MC .Net's documentation even more sparse. I upgraded to the latest version of MC .Net when it became available (MultiCharts .NET64 Version 8.5 Beta 2/Build 6526) and was initially chagrined to discover not all built-in functions & indicators were compiled, moreover would not compile, and ended up deleting the offenders rather than messing with them. Trust things like that will be fixed in the next release. On that note, while both MC .Net and NT insist on compiling all uncompiled sources in the functions/indicators/signals folders when you try to compile new source code, unlike NT MC .Net will compile new source code and allow you to use it even though other source code still has issues. No other issues so far aside from a couple of minor quirks (e.g., occasionally a recompiled indicator will not update on the charts automatically, needs to be removed and installed). Overall I prefer MC to NT as a trader because in my experience MC is significantly more stable and PowerLanguage does pretty much what a trader needs it to do, not that I haven't managed to crash MC from time to time. As a programmer developing bots and doing research into market behaviour however I also need .Net functionality and expect MC .Net to provide that while maintaining the stability. Edited to add: BTW, on the topic of MC .Net documentation I arrived on this thread just now via a Google search while trying to find out what the MC .Net C# equivalents of the PowerLanguage (current bar) "Date" and "Time" functions are Turns out to be Bars.Time[].

Indeed, documentation in Multicharts NET needs some improvements. I would say even more, documentation overall should be better organized perhaps into specific documents covering various domain of interests, with not only syntax definition and one line samples, but more elaborate examples of utilization, etc. Currently, many times you go back searching on Google.
Still, one very nice aspect @ MC is the way they opened product/feature management to their clients. Basically you have direct access to a link where feature requests or bugs can be logged and progress can be tracked. More than that, you can see what is the general interest for specific features and vote, and you get feedback.
It's so much better than sending emails into a "black box" email address.

Regards

andby 

Indeed, documentation in Multicharts NET needs some improvements. I would say even more, documentation overall should be better organized perhaps into specific documents covering various domain of interests, with not only syntax definition and one line samples, but more elaborate examples of utilization, etc. Currently, many times you go back searching on Google. (...)

Their programming/help guide has been released yesterday. See here.

Jura 

Their programming/help guide has been released yesterday. See here.

Big step ahead indeed
Hopefully, they won't stop here, and provide some more advanced docs as well.

I looked on the multicharts website today, and now they are giving away free version of the .net multichart. It can trade real and u can develop studies but you can only trade 2 instruments at a time (I think).

I wonder why they are doing this, I guess its good for getting the word out.. but I already bought the multicharts .net version a while back.. oh well...

KhaosTrader 

I wonder why they are doing this, I guess its good for getting the word out.. but I already bought the multicharts .net version a while back.. oh well...

I think MC is starting to get a little wiser:

1. They used to have the DT version that was free then cancelled it. It helped boost their tiny MC community, which they were too blind to see. They were only trying to copy what NinjaTrader was doing to try and keep some market share.
2. Then they joined the modern world (several years late) and produced a .NET version.
3. Then they realized that there's only about 5 MC users contributing to their MC.NET community.
4. Then they looked at Ninjatrader, which has a gigantic user community with uncountable free indicators and strategies (this website has tons!).
5. Then the light bulb went on: "Hey! We need a free version like NinjaTrader has so that people will start using our product! Then maybe we'll get some more users to contribute free stuff and build a community so people will stop flocking to NinjaTrader!!"

They're a little late to the game, as usual. Late to the game, but IMHO their product is still far more polished, stable, and modern looking than NT. Somebody needs to merge both NT and MC.NET. There's things I love and hate about both of them.

Do you know if MultiCharts has an ATI interface like NinjaTrader? I wonder how I would hook an external, signal-generating system to MC, and have it execute some orders... Any ideas?
J