Track Your Trading in Real Time With the NinjaTrader Desktop Control Center

The Control Center in the NinjaTrader Desktop platform is your master dashboard. It’s where you can access all the trading and analysis tools you need to analyze the markets, place trades, and customize your layouts for a personalized futures trading experience. 

Learn How to Navigate the NinjaTrader Desktop Control Center 

The Control Center opens every time you log in to your NinjaTrader Desktop platform. In this article, we’ll walk through how to monitor your: 

The Control Center Is Your Trading Headquarters  

Stay up to date on all your trading activities and reduce errors with real-time trading and account data in the Control Center. The tabs along the bottom provide key data points related to your accounts—like open and filled orders, account balances, open positions, trading strategies, and more. 

Some tabs offer the ability to trade directly within the tab, like canceling an order on the Orders tab or closing a position on the Positions tab. 

Let’s go over how to navigate the Positions, Orders, and Account tabs.  

Track Profit and Loss With the Positions Tab 

The Positions tab lists all open positions for your accounts, allowing you to track your open profit and loss (P&L) in real time. The Position tabs columns display key information like long or short position, number of contracts, average entry price, and days to roll over. 

To close your position, you can right-click the position row. You can also add a Close Position column by selecting Properties on the bottom of the right mouse button menu. The Properties dialog allows you to format and customize the position columns displayed. 

Manage Your Orders With the Orders Tab 

The Orders tab lists all orders for your accounts, allowing you to track your order status in real time. The Orders tab columns display key information like buy or sell order types; stop, limit, or market order actions; stop or limit order prices; and day or good ‘til canceled (GTC) time in force (TIF) orders. 

The Orders tab also displays the state of each order—working, filled, or canceled. Filled orders display the quantity filled and average entry price. The time column displays the time the order was placed, filled, or canceled. 

To cancel a working order, you can right-click an order row. You can also adjust an order price up or down (cancel and replace). The right mouse menu also gives you access to the Properties dialog, which allows you to format and customize the order columns displayed. 

Track Accounts on the Accounts Tab 

The Accounts tab lists all the accounts tied to your NinjaTrader login, allowing you to track your balance, real-time buying power, and net liquidation value for each account. The Accounts tab columns also display key P&L information—realized, unrealized, and total for all open and closed positions throughout the trading day. To format the maximum order and position size for an account, you can right-click the account row.