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Overwhelmed! Which platform do I choose? Sierra? Ninja? MT5?
I'm going to revive this thread since I have been muddling about with the same question. I've been trading options and futures for around 5-6 years and have used ThinkorSwim and Tradestation. Primarily I use ThinkorSwim but am now as well looking for a new platform.
In all this discussion, unless I missed it, no one has addressed the what the original poster is trading. It sounds like they have been trading options on TOS and are looking to trade futures.
Please correct me if I'm wrong on this one, but Sierra Charts really lacks any functionality when it comes to trading options. There are no real time options tables and any options table there is you have to create manually (at least this is what SC support has told me). I've really wanted to use SC but without dynamic options tables (that you don't create manually) I'm not sure how one uses SC to trade if they trade options as part of their trading ethos.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
wish I would have seen this post before spending 3 grand on a ninjatrader lifetime license and 3rd party addons, sierra charts is so much better, ninja crashes and freezes all the time and sucks
Was this with NT7 or NT8? Were you using a lot of indicators?
I use NT7 and it crashes about once a year on schedule but it's always been when I put some dang new indicator on it when I trade price action only without indicators in the first place.
In other words, it's always my fault for screwing around with new indicators when I don't need them in the first place. (I get bored sometimes and like to look at other things).
I've looked at Sierra Chart but it seems like it would take me a long time to set it up so I always give up on it.
was using NT8, I tried having 10 charts running with lots of order flow indicators and a few 3rd party addons but it would inevitably freeze up or crash within a few hours, got it down to having just 2 ES and nyse tick charts with about 5-7 indicators and it would only crash maybe once every 3 days, thought this was normal considering tradestation and thinkorswim suck too, last straw though was friday sitting there trying to trade and it goes and crashes (I mean completely closes) again right before a key reversal point I had been anticipating so I have been researching sierra charts since and man I regret my ninja trader purchases. sierra is so much leaner and faster. read post from big mike saying he can have 70 charts with sierra running, I wouldn’t even dare try half that with ninja.
btw I am using a maxed out 2019 macbook pro 16” running parallels so my computer performance is not an issue
I’m glad I ran across this topic today, as I was about to pull the trigger and buy NT8 for trading stocks through TD Ameritrade and then eventually move to Futures through a NT broker.
I run a 10900K CPU and 32GB of 3600 RAM and can do about 1 Million calculations in NT8 in a couple hours, so far it has been rock steady for me. This is obviously with the free version!
I basically took most of 2019 off from trading, due to life situations, and was looking at getting back into trading stocks at first, then futures.
In 2017, I dumped Fidelity
In 2019, I dumped TOS. But, I like TD as a broker and buy bonds through them.
In 2020 I dumped TradeStation, I was not a fan of the user interface at all.
I really like the user interface on NT8, it’s super clean and I’m learning C# in hopes of automating, or getting it as close to automated as possible, my trading.
With NT8, is there a big difference between the Free version and the the life license? Are there more indicators in the license one?
all the orderflow stuff is in the lifetime version.
Free version connecting to Live accounts is basically crippleware.. There are a lot of features available in the free version when connected to demo accounts that are not available live unless you lease it. Tabs.. Chart Trading... ATM strategies... I think the ability to code. Not sure if you can run strategies or not.
Performance in ninjatrader is not really linked to machine specifications like cpu and RAM (as long as they are good enough). If only....
Performance issues can plague even highly specced machines but apparently a lot of people don't encounter these issues.. but when you do, it is not fun. It is most likely to occur during periods of very high volatility. Ninjatrader usually always runs fine when the market is quiet.
I would consider also MotiveWave. It's quite recent and works very well. I use Sierrachart and MotiveWave.
All plataforms have pros and cons, Sierrachart is great for customization you can basically do whatever you want. However the learning curve is quite steep.
much less steep with ticinotrader chartbooks (cost a few $ total but worth it) (because then you don't have to configure footprints, tpo, market depth history, vp) yourself - which normally takes a long time to learn because of the myriad of options
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.