DayTradeToWin Reviews

When creating a chart, ever notice the date that comes after the market/instrument name? For example, ES 06-17? The 06-17 tells you the contract period. There are four contract periods in a year: March, June, September, and December. Notice how each period is four months apart. That’s because futures contracts use a quarterly cycle. The current contract you’re trading will eventually expire. You will then need to roll over futures contracts to the next contract period. Both expiration and roll over occur within the same month. The NinjaTrader platform will usually tell you when a contract is about to expire. You can then roll over to the next contract period to avoid trading an inactive market.

Some traders do not roll over futures contracts on the expiration date. They prefer to “go with the volatility,” meaning they only roll over when the majority of the volume or volatility has moved to the new contract period. In some cases, this may be within a couple days after the official expiration date. Where can you find the official expiration dates? Check the CME website. If you look up a market on the CME’s website, the resulting page usually contains a measure of volume. Although the measure was probably taken within the last 10 minutes, rest assured the data is accurate.

Roll Over Futures the Easy Way

In NinjaTrader 8, how does one roll over a contract? Compared to the previous version, the process has been simplified. Simply go to NinjaTrader’s Control Center > Tools > Database Management > ensure that all the markets you want to roll over are checked (NinjaTrader will automatically know which ones need a roll over) > click Rollover. If necessary, you can switch to the new contract period in the upper-left of your chart. In case there is ever an issue with the roll over times, you can correct this by going back to the Database Management area > under “update instruments,” check “future expiries” and click Update. You should also be aware of upcoming 2017 trading holidays.

Let’s say you work a typical 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job. You’re away from the computer during the ideal time of day to trade a market like the E-mini S&P. How can you expect to practice and get better at trading? With NinjaTrader, you can play back market data as though it’s happening live. That means when you get out of work in the evening, you can load up NinjaTrader and play back market data as though it’s happening real-time. Yes, you can use the SuperDOM, ChartTrader, ATM Strategies, indicators, and most of the other tools normally available during live trading. This playback feature is called Market Replay.

How do you set up Market Replay in NinjaTrader? First, you must download the data to for playback via NinjaTrader’s Control Center > Tools > Historical Data > click the Load tab at the bottom > click Get Market Replay data > select the desired instrument and date > click Download. For a second or two, you may notice the download status appear in the bottom-right corner of the window. Market Replay data downloads very quickly. Close this window and get back to NinjaTrader’s Control Center. Next, disconnect from any data feed you’re currently connected to and connect to the Playback Connection. Yes, NinjaTrader should have named it “Market Replay Connection” for consistency. The connection should happen quickly, with a green circle in the bottom-left of the Control Center indicating the connection.

Market Replay Tricks

You should also see a small floating window that controls the playback. Using this tool’s slider, you can advance to a specific time and begin playback from that point (for example, 9:30 a.m. US/Eastern for E-mini market open). When dragging the slider, allow NinjaTrader a few seconds to “catch up” to the new position. You have the option of playing back market data at regular speed (1x) or other increments, going all the way up to 1000x. If you want to replay the same activity again, simply drag the slider back and begin playback.

On occasion, your NinjaTrader 8 charts may not display candles properly. This is most likely due to an expired data feed or underlying data problems. You can test for an expired data feed by disconnecting from all data feeds and then attempting to reconnect to a demo data feed. If you receive a login error, your data feed has most likely expired. In that case, you will need to seek out another demo or fund an account with a broker to get set up with a non-demo feed.However, sometimes this does not fix the issue and you will have to reset your charts.

Sometimes, the problem goes deeper. If data problems persist after installing a new data feed, then check out the settings in the Data Series area. Go to a chart, > right-click the chart and select Data Series. In the right column, our typical settings look like this:

Price based on: Last
Type: Minute
Value: 5
Load data based on: Days
Days to load: 14 (a value below 30 is recommended)
End date: (today’s date)
Trading hours: <Use instrument settings>
Break at EOD: checked

Change any misconfigured setting and click OK. Right-click the chart, and if the option is enabled, click Reload All Historical Data. See if the data issue persists.

Data Problems – Other Fixes

If data issues are still present, then you may need to reset your data. To perform a reset, go to NinjaTrader’s Control Center > Tools > Database Management > near the bottom of the window, click Reset DB. Note that by resetting, you will lose historical trade data. If this data is important to you (likely for account performance purposes), then you may want to uncheck the two boxes. Click the Reset button, wait for NinjaTrader to complete the reset, then restart NinjaTrader.

If problems still occur, you may want to perform a clean NinjaTrader uninstall. We will cover that in a future post.

If you’ve spent any time at all customizing NinjaTrader to your liking, it’s probably worth backing up your settings. Not only can a NinjaTrader backup file restore your configurations easily, it will allow you to apply those settings if you have a new computer or need to restore an existing computer. We’ve seen many hard drives fail and customers get new computers. This simple step will save you a good deal of time down the road.

NinjaTrader Backup Steps

To back up your NinjaTrader settings, go to NinjaTrader’s Control Center > Tools > Export > Backup File > check off all the settings you want to save (we recommend configuration files, NinjaScript files, templates, and workspaces) > Click Export > a file window will appear, select a destination to save the backup file (for example, a thumb drive or safe cloud storage may be a good idea) > optionally specify a name for the file (we recommend including the current date > click Save.

To import from a backup file, go to NinjaTrader’s Control Center > Tools > Import > Backup File > navigate to the folder containing the file > click Open. Note that your existing settings may be overwritten, so you may want to generate a backup of those before importing a previous backup. Read more trading tips for beginners.

So you’ve configured your chart, set up a data feed, and you’ve placed a few live trades. You think you’re onto something – you see patterns in the market and have correctly guessed winning trades. How much were all of those winning trades worth? NinjaTrader’s Account Performance tool can quickly generate a report indicating your overall trading performance or lack thereof. Open up a Trade Performance window by going to NinjaTrader’s Control Center > New > Trade Performance. Notice the two date fields in the top-right of the window. Specify a “from” and “to” date for the report. The report is inclusive of these two dates. Then click Generate. In the area below, you’ll see a breakdown of your progress thus far.

The most telling of your preference is the following:

Net profit (total amount remaining after deductions, e.g. broker fees)
Gross profit and loss (total amount before deductions)
Total # of winning trades
Total # of losing trades
Ratio avg. win / avg. loss

Remember that NinjaTrader allows you to reset this data. You can also specify a starting account size (by default, there is $100,000 of simulated money). The broker cost can also be modified to more accurately represent true trading costs. Then you can generate a new trading performance report.

If you’re sim trading the E-mini S&P, each tick is worth $12.50. There are four ticks in a point. Therefore, a point is worth $50. For an E-mini Account Performance report, remember to divide some of the fields by $12.50 to manually calculate the number of trades.

Chart tabs are a new feature in NinjaTrader 8. They help solve the problem of too many floating windows in a trader’s workspace. Many traders want to use multiple charts for a variety of reasons:

• Compare the activity between two or more markets (e.g. E-mini and Euro)
• Find more trades
• Use a different time frame for the same market
• Use a different configuration or set of indicators

With these four basic reasons, you can see why many traders use multiple charts and have multiple computer screens. In previous versions of NinjaTrader, each chart had to be its own window. With NinjaTrader 8, it’s now possible to have multiple chart tabs contained within the same chart window. How is this possible? Tabs. Yes, look at the bottom of your chart and you will see a plus button. Click this button and you will be on your way to opening a new chart in a new tab. It’s that easy.

Chart Tabs & Chart Settings

Of course, you will need to configure the chart settings before the chart opens up. As one might expect, this is accomplished through the Data Series window. Switch between markets by clicking on each tab. No need to have separate chart windows floating around. You also won’t have to waste time using the Windows taskbar to inefficiently switch around.

In this video, a student asks about migrating from NinjaTrader 7 to NinjaTrader 8. We recommend against attempting to migrate. Also, the backup file format may be incompatible between versions. You’re just better off starting with a clean slate. Install Ninja 8 clean. You won’t be able to use your old Ninja 7 indicators in version 8, anyway. From the video lessons, you’ve seen how to configure your charts and save settings. It won’t take long at all. The best way to learn day trading is with our Get Started Trading Guide. The Guide is a great accompaniment to these video lessons.