Futures Options going forward

[jvanelli]

I understand that options are a "work in progress" with NT8. I am encouraged that NinjaTrader have undertaken this project, and while I will not be using NT8 to trade options for a while, I am trying to look ahead. My primary market of interest is the ES index futures on the S&P 500. Available options via CME/Globex include weeklys with Monday, Wednesday and Friday expiration, monthlys expiring last business day of each month, and the quarterlys. Yet when I create a new option chain only a small subset of available contracts is ever displayed. For example, just now what is displayed for instrument ES 09-20 (expires 09/18/20) are the last five series for the underlying contract; i.e. the E1C expiring 09/02, the EW1 expiring 90/04, the E1A expiring 09/08, the EW2 expiring 09/11 and the ES expiring 09/18. None of the several weeklies or the monthly series yet to expire in August are displayed. And so I am wondering if this is a deliberate limitation that might be removed as development progresses, or if it is a bug, or if it is because I have some error in my setup. This is not a question of immediate urgency, just something I'd like to know in order to plan ahead.

[NinjaTrader_Marco]

Hello,

Thanks for your post.

What data provider are you using to view the futures options contracts?

I look forward to your reply.

[jvanelli]

Sorry for slow replay. I use Interactive Brokers for trading futures and options on futures. Again, this is just experimental for me at this point in time. I note that the August contracts I had previously loaded in Market Analyzer still display, but it is September now and I can no longer add any August contracts (different strikes, etc) to Market Analyzer. However, I can add any contracts from the September series displayed in the Option Chain. This may be more of an IB issue, as more and more they seem to be restricting what they make available to third party platforms.

[NinjaTrader_Marco]

Hello,




Thanks for your reply.

Interactive Brokers made it so only options corresponding to the underlying expiry date are queried/returned. Pacing limitations were introducing unreasonable loading times on weekly expiries and as a result, do not provide weekly futures options expiries at this time.




Please let me know if I may be of any further assistance.

[jvanelli]

Understand. I've been trading these options for several years and to be honest, have no need for an option chain display -- which must be extraordinarily inefficient when all I want is bid/ask on one or two specific contracts . I understand the NT8 syntax for defining a particular option and can key that in quick enough, no need to wait for an option chain to be displayed. I'll be happy if I can just count on Market Analyzer to query IB and display the bid/ask, reliably. And that seems to be working this morning, for all series, including weeklys and monthlys through September. I can also see the September and December quarterlys. So this almost works for me ...

[NinjaTrader_Melissa]

Hello jvanelli,

Thank you for that feedback.

As you noted, our Options window is still in beta so our development team is actively looking for ways to improve the system.

You can add an options put/call to the Market Analyzer, but you need the full name.

Here is an example of me doing so:

https://www.screencast.com/t/DFye7R9gqY

Please let us know if we may be of any further assistance.

[jvanelli]

Thanks, Melissa. An enhancement, from my point of view, would be an expanded dialog box for specifying instruments to Market Analyzer (or DOM, or Charts, etc) such that user could specify the underlying futures contract ("ES 09-20") and the series ("EW" or "ES" or "EW3" or whatever) followed by the right ("P" or "C"), the expiry ("200911") and strike ("3300"). This would parse directly into the NT8 display symbol ("EW_ESF 200911 P 3300" or whatever) and bypass the cumbersome, data hungry option chain interface entirely. I'm pretty sure any clients who do a lot of the ES options would prefer this. If this approach reduced the burden on data providers and such that we could access the weeklies et al, then I'd say simply dispense with the option chain (or make it an option, either/or).

[NinjaTrader_Melissa]

Hello,

Thank you for the feedback.

I have submitted this as a feature request to the Development Team. I will follow up with an internal tracking number for your reference as soon as it is created.

Thanks in advance for your patience.

[jvanelli]

I wanted to expand on this just a bit. In my opinion, IB are only limiting option chain queries to contracts related to the current ES underlying expiration date. I do not think they are limiting queries or access to the individual option contract data in similar fashion. I say this because I have observed that any open option contracts in my IB account can be accessed (by Charts, Market Analyzer, even by SuperDOM) just so long as I know how to enter the appropriate symbol (e.g. EW_ESF 201030 P 3400 , which is an option on the December contract). I think this is because when I connect an IB account to NT the appropriate IB ticker links are associated with symbols in NT for use by the portfolio display in NT Control Center. Once that association is established, then NT would know how to link to option data to the corresponding symbol via the IB API . Of course this only allows access to data on option contracts already open in an IB portfolio, but note that portfolio does not need to exist in an IB live trading account. I have verified that it can exist in a simulated or "paper trading" account with the same result. Thus I do not believe the limitation is totally due to IB restrictions, but more a matter of NT not having a facility to independently define the ticker links to IB.

[NinjaTrader_Melissa]

Hello,

Thanks for your patience.

The internal tracking number for your feature request is SFT-4463 . Please reference this internal tracking number when contacting Platform Support if you ever have questions regarding this feature request.

When a feature request is implemented, you'll find a description of the new feature in the release notes:

• http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpG...ease_notes.htm