How important are hotkeys to you?

[JS999]

( This poll is for intraday traders only... if you trade EOD obviously you're not going to care about hotkeys. )

I wanted to get a sense of how important hotkeys are to people who use NinjaTrader. I know it is something that I would really, really, really like to / need to have as a short-term trader. In a fast moving market using the mouse on the SuperDOM is impossible, and requires you to always take the market at the ask or bid, which essentially kills a number of short-term scalping strategies. In other words, without hotkeys NinjaTrader is basically 100% ruled out for this type of activity.

Considering how easy it should be to implement hotkeys from a coding perspective, I'm amazed that this hasn't been done yet. All we seem to hear is a bunch of "thanks for the suggestion, we'll consider it" stuff which isn't very helpful.

Here is one way that hotkeys could be very easily implemented:

1. Have a menu option in the SuperDOM to turn hotkeys on or off. Since it would be off by default, it won't affect those who don't know about or want to use it.

2. If hotkeys is turned on, then trap every keystroke, but only if the SuperDOM in question is the active window (i.e. if a chart window is active then ignore, or if another SuperDOM window is active then use that window's settings).

3. Allow the user to define keys for the following things:

- buy at market
- sell at market
- limit buy at market +/- predefined amount (for example, buy at market + 5 ticks, or buy at market - 1 tick)... allow up to 3 different "custom buy limit" buttons to define different levels for this
- limit buy at bid +/- predefined amount (for example, buy at bid + 1 tick, or buy at bid - 3 ticks)... allow up to 3 different "custom buy limit" buttons to define different levels for this
- do the same thing for limit sell buttons as for buy buttons in the previous two lines
- allow for up to 10 buttons to instantly define lot sizes according to use preference (for example, if you set up the keypad, you could make "0" the default lot size, then make the numbers 1 through 5 equal to 1 lot, 2 lot, 3 lot, 5 lot, and 10 lot, or something... whatever the user wanted)
- A button for cancel all orders
- A button for close all positions
- A button for reverse position

I'm sure that there are many more you can think of.

This should very simple to do guys - all you have to do is trap the keystroke and feed it it into the same code that the mouse click action now performs, if the user has the SuperDOM window active and hotkeys turned on. This is not more than a 1 week programming job, and to be honest I am completely surprised that you haven't done this already, considering that a number of your customers have asked for it.

You guys do realize that not having hotkeys completely eliminates your platform from contention for any short-term scalpers who trade in fast moving markets, don't you? Why are you throwing money away when this is so easy to fix?

Anyways, let's take a poll... how many people agree with me?

[JS999]

So far it appears that 7 out of 10 people really want hotkeys... of course that could change as the poll continues, but it's obvious that a number of people really want this.

As an added note guys, consider the fact that the people voting on this thread are those who are already using NinjaTrader, despite the fact that you haven't included this basic functionality that they have been asking for. I wonder how much business you have lost to people who never bothered to use your product in the first place because you couldn't address their needs as short-term scalpers? Those people aren't on these forums and don't even know that this poll exists... we're just polling the people who have been willing to put up with your product despite the fact that you haven't included what they want.

Hotkeys are a 100% no-brainer from a business perspective. You should have had this very simple and obvious functionality from day 1, and it should be your #1 priority to add it, if you know what you're doing. You are definitely losing licenses out there to your competitors because a lot of short-term scalpers are not going to use your product at all in its current state. If an extra 100 traders in the world decide to buy lifetime subscriptions to your software because you can now address their priority needs, that's $100k in your pocket for a very simple simple code change.

Think about it - 1 week or less of programming time in exchange for at least $100,000 in extra revenue from people who might now consider your product... you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out.

I would really add this into version 7 if I were you, instead of just giving us the standard "we'll think about it" line.

[roonius]

So far it appears that 7 out of 10 people really want hotkeys... of course that could change as the poll continues, but it's obvious that a number of people really want this.

As an added note guys, consider the fact that the people voting on this thread are those who are already using NinjaTrader, despite the fact that you haven't included this basic functionality that they have been asking for. I wonder how much business you have lost to people who never bothered to use your product in the first place because you couldn't address their needs as short-term scalpers? Those people aren't on these forums and don't even know that this poll exists... we're just polling the people who have been willing to put up with your product despite the fact that you haven't included what they want.

Hotkeys is literally a NO BRAINER from a business perspective. You should have had this very simple and obvious functionality from day 1, and it should be your #1 priority to add it, if you know what you're doing. You are definitely losing licenses out there to your competitors because a lot of short-term scalpers are not going to use your product at all in its current state. If an extra 100 traders in the world decide to buy lifetime subscriptions to your software because you can now address their needs as short term scalpers, that's $100k in your pocket for a simple code change.

Think about it - 1 week of programming time in exchange for at least $100,000 in extra revenue from people who might now consider your product... hmmm... you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out.

I would really add this into version 7 if I were you, instead of just giving us the standard "we'll think about it" line.

Seems like you have done a good market research.
There are about 10 000 registered users on this forum.
So about 0.1 % did "vote".

Why don't you wait until at least 40 - 50 % will vote ?

[JS999]

We aren't going to get anywhere near 4000-5000 responses. For starters, a number of people won't bother or don't always read the forums. However, I did mention in my post that the numbers in the poll could change... I don't really expect an overwhelming number of responses that say that they don't care at all about hotkeys, but I guess we'll see. Somewhere around 100 members will give us a pretty good indication I think.

In any case, polling people on these forums is always going to be a little misleading since these are people that already chose NinjaTrader despite the lack of hotkeys. The real loss to the company's bottom line is all the people who aren't reading this thread or using NT because they determined that it didn't meet their needs and went somewhere else. Given that there are 10,000 registered members here who do use NT, I don't think it's a stretch to guess that there are an extra few hundred people who might have bought NT but went with something else instead, that served their short-term trading interests better.

That's a lot of money to lose for something that is trivially simple to program, and that is really the point I was trying to make to the decision makers at NT. They're not doing us a favor by adding hotkeys, they're doing themselves a favor. There probably isn't any other feature they could add right now which would impact their bottom line more, since the lack of this feature is essentially excluding an entire class of traders (scalpers).

It's a very smart business move to add this ASAP, and they really should have done it a long time ago.

Seems like you have done a good market research.
There are about 10 000 registered users on this forum.
So about 0.1 % did "vote".

Why don't you wait until at least 40 - 50 % will vote ?

[jdfagan]

not just for discretionary SuperDOM like traders

I just wanted to re-iterate my point of view here on this thread. I don't even use SuperDOM as I primarily use automation, but I'd still like the ability to customize my own keymaps for various functionality of Ninja. The key for me is that hotkeys can be customized (i.e., mapped and/or remapped) by the end user for many various functions within Ninja - not just for SuperDOM per se.

Any command I can issue from the Control Center, for instance, I'd like to be able to create my own custom keymap for a hotkey. And this would also allow capability to override existing defined ones if one so chooses (although you should be nice and prompt user that they are about to redefine an existing keymap which is assigned - and let us know what that definition is).

For example, I run Realtime/Historical Strategy Performance runs quickly on charts alot. And its become a nuisance to click thru so many times in menus. I'd love to define a kemap of CTRL-ALT-S for instance that points to menu command of Strategy Performance-> Historical & Real-time when I have a specific strategy highlighted within Control Center's Strategies tab.

[JS999]

jdfagan,

As a programmer I thought I would comment on this. It's actually a little more difficult to do what you are asking for, because you are asking for global hotkey mapping that is supposed to work across any number of windows (no matter which window has the focus), and across the entire application in a customizable way.

The type of keymapping that you are asking for is not trivial to implement, in that it would require a change in some basic architecture of how the program is set up in order to have a proper system in place to be able to trap any keystroke and globally map it to any command. Not that this is impossible, but it's the type of work that takes a lot more than than a few days to implement, and requires a lot more QA and testing to make sure that it doesn't break existing code due to bugs, etc.

Furthermore, the type of change you are asking for is really just a convenience, not a necessity for anyone to be able to trade with NT. Case in point, you are in fact using NT despite the fact that they don't have global hotkey mapping. Therefore, if I was management at NinjaTrader I would consider this request as a nice-to-have feature, but given the work-to-revenue ratio likely to cost me in meeting your request, I would probably put it off. (Note that I hope they do actually do this for you, I'm just giving you my opinion on why it probably won't happen soon, so you know.)

On the other hand, hopefully we can convince them to start with hotkeys in the SuperDOM, because that is a very easy and inexpensive feature to implement, is not likely to break existing code in any way, is easy to test, and IS in fact right now costing them significant money because there are a lot of traders out there who won't use this platform at all without the ability to quickly place orders using the keyboard.

If we can get them to start off with the SuperDOM stuff, then hopefully they will start building a codebase for hotkeys that can later on be expanded to accommodate the type of thing you are asking for. Anyways, that's just my opinion on how they are likely to proceed, take it for what it's worth...

I just wanted to re-iterate my point of view here on this thread. I don't even use SuperDOM as I primarily use automation, but I'd still like the ability to customize my own keymaps for various functionality of Ninja. The key for me is that hotkeys can be customized (i.e., mapped and/or remapped) by the end user for many various functions within Ninja - not just for SuperDOM per se.

Any command I can issue from the Control Center, for instance, I'd like to be able to create my own custom keymap for a hotkey. And this would also allow capability to override existing defined ones if one so chooses (although you should be nice and prompt user that they are about to redefine an existing keymap which is assigned - and let us know what that definition is).

For example, I run Realtime/Historical Strategy Performance runs quickly on charts alot. And its become a nuisance to click thru so many times in menus. I'd love to define a kemap of CTRL-ALT-S for instance that points to menu command of Strategy Performance-> Historical & Real-time when I have a specific strategy highlighted within Control Center's Strategies tab.

[^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.