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If you are indeed trading ES futures on the CME, it doesn't matter what the online platform feed is saying. It all boils down to the current bid/ask price is on the CME.
But execution lag would matter. I do not have experience with your broker or your data feed to your Ninjatrader to comment further.
As a further comment:
I largely agree with what the majority of the others are saying. $2000 is too small an account to day trade the ES (risk of ruin is too high.) 20 trade loss will not happen off the bat, but when you account is down to $1000 or so (which is a high probability event), you WILL go on tilt and end up losing the rest in lightspeed fashion (speaking from personal experience )
And of course, all the other pitfalls for trading a small account in what is perhaps the most competitive and aggressive instrument there is on the market.
Regardless, you might be a market wizard in the making and I wish you all the best. At least when you fail, you know where to go to for advice. Just re-read these posts again!
Since we're going off topic, ill keep it brief and wish you the best of luck.
The instruments I mentioned are not safer. They have lower dollar per tick values meaning you will lose less and extend the time you have available to learn. Your focus shouldn't be on how much you can make, it should be on how much you can lose.
I can't profess to be any kind of master trader (far from it) and am by no means through the learning curve so ill just speak from personal experience. Learning to trade has not only taken much longer than I expected but it has also been far more challenging than I could have ever initially imagined. Also, the learning never ends. Arguably the real learning only starts with your first live account,..which is why you want to make it last.
I have no idea how many people trade the ES in South Africa. I swing traded stocks on the JSE for roughly 3 years. I then spent a year learning to trade intraday while working and continuing to swing trade. Since the beginning of this year I began trading full time and can certainly say, that is when I realized how much I didn't know.
Because your risk of ruin is very high with such a small account trading such a relatively expensive instrument.
My account balance is about 10 times yours, and I won't trade the ES because it's still still too small (risk wise) to trade that instrument while learning to trade live. Once I've proven myself consistently profitable trading the M6E live, I will test the waters of the ES.
And depending on your brokerages ES margin requirements, one or two stops with your one point stop could easily put your balance under the minimum mandatory needed to trade even a single ES contract, and thus you would be shut down from trading in a couple of trades.....not the 20 trades needed to blow out your account.
Please have a look at this video (link posted below) from FT71 that will explain the reasons for using M6E for beginners with small accounts. One great thing about NexusFi (formerly BMT) and the advise from all the advanced traders is that you can save yourself from doing the financially harmful rookie mistakes that most make in the beginning IF YOU FOLLOW their advise.
@budfox,
It's your money. You will be the one taking the trades. You will be the one banking the profits. You will be the one responsible for the losses. So make sure that YOU are the one that decides / commits to what you are going to do. Asking for other peoples opinion on a public forum is flawed because you have no idea who is answering you and what their motivations are. What absolutely does not work is looking for others to answer the difficult questions for you. Pay someone a few thousand and they will make you a trader? Nope. You dig it out of the dirt. And there is good information on NexusFi (formerly BMT) - but there is horrible information on NexusFi (formerly BMT) as well. Again, it's up to you to dig it out of the dirt. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it with $2k. But don't rely on anyone to show you how to do it either. In trading, it's all you. Accept it, and start digging.
Yes, you can use Ninja demo to trade a live web-based account and... No, I would not recommend it.