Feature Request: Spot Price

[jeronymite]

As a currency trader, I calculate position sizes and stop losses for many currency pairs that require the price of a USD pair to calculate the correct rates. For example, to calculate for AUDNZD, one needs the current NZDUSD ask and/or bid price.

Currently, it appears the only supported way to obtain the rates for all USD pairs that might be required is to Add DataSeries for those pairs. This could be a significant overhead. Ideally, what one would like is something like CurrentAsk or CurrentBid that works on any currency pair available from the connection. For example, CurrentAsk("$NZDUSD").

The data are available on a spot price basis, since this is what OnExecutionUpdate provides through the Rate it returns in the event arguments (ExecutionUpdateEventArgs).

Can these data be made generally available for any instrument as a parameter to CurrentAsk or CurrentBid, please? Thanks!

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

The problem is you need to be able to subscribe to that instrument at some point. AddDataSeries() does this for you in the Instruments array. If we provided a GetCurrentBid(instrumentName), there would be a ton of overhead in subscribing to this instrument depending on how frequently you attempted get that value. You could - of course - just subscribe once when the indicator is configured, but then you're doing just as much, if not more work as AddDataSeries().

Currently, you could use Instrument.GetInstrument("NZDUSD ").MarketData.Bid.Price, but again - it needs to be subscribed somehow. Opening a market analyzer, time and sales, or another chart, etc would handle that for you, but there is no way to programmatically subscribe to that instrument, without using AddDataSeries()

GetCurrentBid(int barsSeriesIndex) is the safest and best way to achieve this. I don't foresee this changing.

If the overhead you're concerned with is memory, are you aware there is a barsToLoad overload to reduce the number of bars requested?

protected override void OnStateChange()
{
	if (State == State.Configure)
	{
                // request NZDUSD only 1 bar back
		AddDataSeries("NZDUSD", new BarsPeriod(), 1, "Forex", false);
	}
}


protected override void OnBarUpdate()
{
	Print(BarsArray[1].Count); // only 1 bar requested
	Print(GetCurrentBid(1)); // gets NZDUSD's bid
}

[jeronymite]

Feature Request: Spot Price

Thanks, Matthew.

In NT7, one can Add only a few DataSeries, none of which is a USD currency pair, and when one trades on any of them, the OnExecutionUpdate method finds the needed USD Rate. I simply want to make that capability callable, since it appears the ability to get spot rates is already built-in.

Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

Thanks for the clarification. I've added your suggestion and feedback to SFT-512

[jeronymite]

Feature Request: Spot Price

Just seeking an update on this. Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

We have plans to document more core methods which this method would fall under, but I cannot say when that might be as our primary goal is fixing bugs to get a stable production release sooner than later.