NT support staff: Can you please answer this question about hotkeys?

[JS999]

This is an open letter to the NT support staff on these forums:

Overall, I have found your level of service and prompt replies to questions on these forums to be excellent. However, I must say that when it comes to answering questions about features that may or may not be included future versions of NT, I have been somewhat less impressed.

Now maybe it's not your fault because management refuses to give you clear answers, but repeatedly hearing phrases like "thanks for the suggestion, we'll pass it on to development" is really quite useless for those of us who need to make purchasing decisions about your software based on some of these features.

I honestly fail to see why management in your firm cannot (a) tell us which features are likely to be included in future versions of NT, or (b) if they are not going to be included, tell us why. Or (c), if management refuses to tell you which features are on the list, and if they also refuse to tell you why, you can at least let us know that this is the case (and that there's nothing you can personally do about it), and perhaps indicate to management that one of more of us are VERY interested in speaking to them directly, either by email or phone. There is no guarantee that management would comply with such a request, but at least you could pass it on to them that some of us would really like to do so... you never know, they might actually give us a clearer explanation on one or two issues. All of these answers would be a lot more useful than the standard "thanks for the input" responses I see a lot of in these forums.

In any case, I am right now on the borderline of potentially purchasing a lifetime subscription and using NT as my trading software of choice, mostly because I like the broker and data feed (ZenFire) that is only available to me by using NT. However, my style of trading is such that it would marginally benefit from a feature that your software is currently missing, namely the inclusion of hotkeys for order entry, and I am not about to spend time and money on a piece of software that is going to be unable to serve my basic needs for the next few years.

As you can see from this thread:

http://www.ninjatrader-support2.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15382

There are a number of people that are also very interested in getting this feature as I described it, so it's not just me that wants hotkeys included. Most other trading platforms have this very basic feature, and it seems to me that you could easily choose to include it if you wanted to, as it is not an onerous request in terms of time or development resources.

As it stands, if you could assure me that hotkeys were likely to make it into your platform within the next 6 months, I would be willing to purchase a lifetime subscription and use your software until then, because I like a lot of the other things that you offer. However, if the answer is that you will not likely be including this feature at all for the foreseeable future, I will regrettably have to start looking more at some of your potential competitors, despite the fact that I like a lot of other things about NT. Constantly losing ticks because I have to take the market at the bid or ask all the time without being able to position my orders properly is not something that I am willing to put up with indefinitely.

I have used LightSpeed and other platforms in the past, and there is no reason why you cannot easily program something similar to what they do: put in keys for order entry at the bid or ask +/- a few predetermined points for example, and put in some keys to move an existing limit order up or down a tick by pressing some keys (say the up and down arrows or whatever the user defines). Your competitors have had these features for many, many years, and there is absolutely no reason why you cannot or should not include them.

This is not a request for a "nice-to-have" feature, this is a request for a feature that will probably make the difference between you receiving my money or not... not to mention the money of a number of other people like me who maybe don't have the time or patience to try to break through to your management team and get a clear answer on this. Many others are probably just bypassing your software altogether without bothering to try to get an answer as I am.

A more detailed response on this issue would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Thanks for taking the time to write.

I am the CEO.

Hotkeys is on my list for consideration and I do understand that this is a feature that is in demand by some of our users. It is near the top of my list to research and understand how this could be implemented in NT and I will likely get to it in the next month. With this research will come a decision if and when this would be implemented. I cannot guarantee you that you would see this implemented within a six month window.

I appreciate that you may need to divert your funds elsewhere however, I would much rather tell you the facts and lose your business instead of giving you false hope that we would have it in six months in order to pry you from your hard earned dollars only to dissapoint you in the future.

Thanks for understanding.

[JS999]

Ray,

Thank you very much for the honest and prompt reply, it is appreciated. I am at the moment obviously exploring all of my options, and am directing this request for hotkeys to a number of different platform vendors and brokers, in an effort to see who is willing and/or able to meet my request.

Without looking at your software code it is of course difficult to tell, but as a programmer my first impression is that it really would be relatively inexpensive to implement this functionality. It is a simple matter of trapping a keystroke vs. a mouse button click and then feeding it into the same code path that handles the execution type (cancel, move order, etc.). If you have a function like this for example:

PlaceOrderAtPrice(decimal price)

that is called when the user clicks a price on the SuperDOM (obviously I am oversimplifying the parameters in my example here), then all you have to do is call that exact same method from a keypress handler instead of a mouse click handler, and it should work. It should also be relatively easy to QA this, since all you are changing is the event handling code and the rest feeds into your normal execution pipeline. Setting up a matrix to decide which key is mapped to what command and allowing the user to modify it should not be too bad either... I can't imagine that this would cost you more than a few weeks of work.

Consider the cost/benefit ratio to your firm for this feature. If you have to pay one decent senior programmer for a few weeks of work for this (let's say that costs you $6000 for the sake of argument), then all you have to do is sell an extra 6 lifetime license worldwide to cover your cost of development, and the rest you make is pure profit. Do you think there might be 6 people in the world who would buy this software just because you now have hotkeys? I think that's a safe bet.

Take a look at my poll in the thread I mentioned. 16 people on these forums alone already want this functionality very badly... don't you think that these numbers should cover your costs plus a lot more, when you expand this trend out to the general trading population? It would give you a very strong competitive advantage over other companies that don't have this feature. From a cost/benefit perspective, I am hard-pressed to think of another feature you could add that would deliver a ratio as good as this one in terms of future revenues, and if I were you I would make it a top priority to implement this functionality.

It's up to you, but I am making this same pitch to a number of other vendors... whoever is the most responsive is probably going to get my business.

Thanks again for your time!

Thanks for taking the time to write.

I am the CEO.

Hotkeys is on my list for consideration and I do understand that this is a feature that is in demand by some of our users. It is near the top of my list to research and understand how this could be implemented in NT and I will likely get to it in the next month. With this research will come a decision if and when this would be implemented. I cannot guarantee you that you would see this implemented within a six month window.

I appreciate that you may need to divert your funds elsewhere however, I would much rather tell you the facts and lose your business instead of giving you false hope that we would have it in six months in order to pry you from your hard earned dollars only to dissapoint you in the future.

Thanks for understanding.

[JS999]

Ray,

Just to follow up on this, I am going to be opening up an account with Infinity Futures in the next month or so, and I have made the same pitch to their management team to decide whether or not they want to add hotkeys to their InfinityAT software. If they do that I'll end up going with them and using MarketDelta for my charting package, but if they don't and if you are willing to say that NT is going to get hotkeys sometime within let's say a 6-9 month window, then I will go with the NT account option at their firm and purchase a lifetime license from you.

I have to tell them which type of account I will be opening within a few weeks (InfinityAT or NT), so hopefully I'll be able to get some indication of an answer from one or both of you by then. If you do come to a decision about the hotkey issue during this timeframe, it would great if you could post it here.

Thanks!

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Please send an email to sales attention to "Ray" referencing this post.

[JS999]

Thanks - I have sent the email. I also just thought of something that I wrote in the email and would like to restate here for Ray: namely, the issue of adding a couple of extra buttons to the SuperDOM.

Ray, if you don't want to do hotkeys right away (obviously I still think you should), you can still get my business by adding two simple buttons to the SuperDOM. I need one button to place a buy order at the bid + 1 point, and one button to place a sell order at the ask - 1 point. These buttons can be clicked with the mouse, like any other, and could be placed right above the buy at market and sell at market buttons that currently already exist.

This feature cannot possibly involve more than a few hours of work to for a coder to implement... it has to be something like 5 lines of code all told, and could easily be done in half a day. This alone would make your platform much easier to use for short-term traders, even if you don't implement all of the hotkey functionality that has been requested - and it will also get you my business and one more lifetime subscription. I urge you to please consider it.

Thanks!

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hi JS9999,

Thank you for your reply.

I have forwarded this on to Ray.
Thank you!

[JS999]

I just thought I would also post a specific example of exactly why I am asking for this feature, and why it is so important. Perhaps that will make you see why it would be a big advantage for a number of your traders if you had it.

Let's say you are trading YM (Dow minis) during the day, and you would like to scalp a quick move for 10-20 points. Commissions are generally going to run you around $4 to $5 round trip per lot, so let's say that costs you 1 point per contract. Then, assume that you have to cross the market to buy at the bid or the ask, so that's another point lost in slippage (assuming 1 point bid/ask spread, which happens on the YM). So basically you are paying 2 points with commissions and slippage, which if you have a high win rate is decent enough on a quick 10-20 point move.

However, the problem here is that the spread on YM is often not just 1 point. Yes, when the market is quiet you will see that, but even then it often jumps to 2 points about 50% of the time, and sometimes I have seen it as high as 3 or even 4 points. Consider what happens when you want to get into this contract under those conditions and it's moving quickly. Let's say that it is at 7770 by 7773 after a fast move. You would like to get in short for a very quick scalp down for 10-15 points, so what are your options?

You could:

1. Click the button to put in an offer at the ask, but that would put you behind all the other orders at 7773. You may not get filled.

2. Find the 7772 price on the SuperDOM and click that. You have to move your mouse fast to that exact point on the screen, and you'd better not miss that level and put it at 7773 or 7771 instead, something that can easily happen when you are dealing with a fast market and have to move your mouse quickly. You'd also better hope that the ask doesn't move down to 7772 while you are moving your mouse over to that price, because then you'll have to change your order to 7771 in mid-stream to get to the front of the line.

3. You could just hit the bid. This ensures that you will be in right away even if it moves, but you're paying a 3 point spread on entry. For a 10-15 point move that is crazy... you can't consistently pay that percentage of your profit target in slippage and commissions, that is just a recipe for losses.

In short, this type of trade is impossible to perform consistently and profitably with your current order entry system.

What you really want to do is have a quick button or key that you can press which allows you to enter your sell order at the ask minus one point. This is perfect because you are instantly entering at the best price available which still allows you to be at the head of the order queue. It also doesn't matter if the ask moves as you go to press the button... if the ask moves down to 7772 right before your finger hits the mouse button, your order will just automatically get placed at 7771 when the code is executed. There is of course no guarantee that you will be filled in this scenario, but it's a lot better entry situation than just placing your order at the ask or hitting the bid. It basically guarantees that the next tick up will get you filled first, at the best possible price.

This functionality is not so necessary on a slower-moving futures contracts like ES, because that quarter-point spread basically guarantees that you always only have two options - enter at the market, or place at the bid/ask. But on something like YM, you really need an order entry system like what I described to maximize your profits and reduce slippage if you want to trade very short-term moves. This will also help in trading after normal market hours when the spread widens even more.

Considering that a number of other vendors don't have this feature, adding it will give you a competitive advantage... and as I said, the time to add two buttons and hook up 3 lines of code is not more than a few hours. I don't think you'll pay more than a few hundred dollars in development costs to do this, and it could very easily be added into your next rollout if you chose to do so. The cost/benefit ratio of my subscription alone would easily pay for it....

[NinjaJorge]

Hi, I'd like to thank JS999 for expressing in such an articulate manner what many of us have been thinking and/or saying for, in some cases, several years.

I'd also like to second his proposal to, not withstanding the implementation of hotkeys at some point in the future (please), add a few buttons to the DOMs that allow to offer at the ask +1/2/3 or to bid at -1/2/3, as well as two buttons to move the last pending order up/down one tick (as the "+" and "-" buttons in the Orders tab - doing this as it stands now requires hover-click-hover-click and it's a constant source of misstrades.

As for the business part, if Ninja had hotkeys and allowed multiple instruments in the same chart, I'd have gone for a lifetime license long ago.

I understand that when you open a thread for suggestions for future versions it quickly becomes a letter to Santa Claus, but I would say that hotkeys are more bread and butter than bells and whistles.

Best trading,

Jorge

[^eagle^]

Just a simple buy stop at +x pips above bid
Simple sell stop at -x pips below ask

This is to capture break out moves as price bangs on support and resistance. If it fails top break then I am out of a trade with no loss.
Both with programmable stop losses.

Don't care if its hot keys or or buttons on chart.

Not too familiar with Superdom as I have only used the charting software.

Best charting in the business! At least that is my not so wide experience has led me to believe.


I too may have to look elsewhere without this feature.