Instrument Manager Question

[kinsei]

I don't see a forum for this so I hope this is an okay place to post questions about instrument manager.

I am a new user to Ninja Trader. I just purchased the 3-month live trading subscription a couple of days ago to test it out and see if it is the platform for me. So far I have still not used it during the day because I have not had the time to go through and copy all of my watch lists over to the instrument manager. The process for doing this seems much more intensive than any of the other programs I have tried before.

I am relatively new to trading in general so I am not an expert on how everything works. I only trade stocks and do mainly day trading with a little bit of swing trading scattered in here and there. I am a TD Ameritrade customer and as far as trading platforms have mainly just used their own tools so far such as Command Center, Strategy Desk, ThinkorSwim, QuoteScope, etc. I also have a Platinum Subscription to Worden bros and use both TeleChart and StockFinder. The TD Ameritrade platforms leave much to be desired and the Worden apps, while extremely useful for finding new stocks, have limited trading capabilities and are really only useful for swing traders or longer term investors so I am still looking for the best trading platform to complement my style.

The biggest immediate difference between those other programs I have used and NT seems to be the fact that I can just enter the stock symbol in the other programs to create my watchlists or view the charts. In NT there is apparently this longer process of Building Instrument lists within Instrument manager since a good amount of the stocks I trade don't exist in the program to begin with. I am okay with this process but there appears to be almost no documentation on it, other than an explanation of what buttons to click to add a new instrument. I have several questions on the process and I can't seem to find any answers in the provided documentation. I hope someone can help me answer the following...

- What does "Merge Policy" mean?
- What does the "Session Template" setting accomplish?
- For the URL, is this just a personal preference regarding which page I want to go to or is there some more significance to it that I am not recognizing?
- How do I know which exchanges to select when adding the instruments? ... So far I have been using the main exchange listed for the instrument in StockFinder for this selection, but when I look at Level 2 information within TDA there are always many more exchanges listed. Am I losing anything in NT if I don't select those exchanges as well?
- If so, is there anywhere I can go to get the full list of all potential exchanges for each stock when I create the instruments?
- Is there anyway to have NT download this information from somewhere?
- What does the exchange setting of "Default" mean?
- On the Misc tab, I have to configure Symbol Mappings for every single potential Market Data feed. Is there a reason that this Symbol Map does not autopopulate these fields with the value of the Master Instrument field by default? So far I find that each time I create an instrument I have to spend 30 seconds copying and pasting that symbol into each and every symbol map. This might not seem like a long time but when I am adding many instruments it begins to add up very quickly and make the process very time consuming.
- Is there any reason that I should leave the symbol mappings for the Market Data Feeds I am not currently using blank? It seems to me to be easier to just add all of them now since I am already going through the process in case I decide in the future that I prefer to use a different feed, but if this for some reason causes NT to be slower or waste bandwidth trying to contact feeds that I have not configured connections for, then I could see why this would be a bad practice.

I think that's it for now. Thanks for any guidance. If you can point me to a document that explains these things I'd be more than happy to RTFM but I simply can't find anything on this in the guides I have read thus far.

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

kinsei, welcome to NinjaTrader and thanks for purchasing a license.

The best place to start is our helpguide on those topics -

http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/instrument_manager.htm

http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/editing_instruments.htm

> Merge policy refers to how futures contracts data is aligned together to arrive at continuous charts, since per default futures contracts expire after a certain amount of calendar trading time.

> The session templates define the trading hours for your symbol, for regular US stocks, you can choose for example the presetup US Equities one.

> URL is a placeholder for the exchange website for your trading product, i.e index, future or stock you may want to save for easy reference, this does not have to be entered.

> You will need to educate yourself on the exchanges you want to trade your product on, best would to contact your broker which one you should be executing on if there're multiple to choose from.

> Unfortunately there's no full list of exchange possible for each product worldwide, the instrument manager lists the exchange options we can support. Best source would be again your broker for this type of info.

> Think of the symbol map as the ticker name your broker uses to represent this specific instrument, those can and do vary, so if the symbol map is entered correct NT can 'translate' as needed so the request for market data for this symbol is routed correctly for the various technology providers.

[kinsei]

Thank you for your reply. I was unable to access the v7 full manual beforehand so this is very helpful. The program doesn't have a full help manual included and there is no link to it from the main NT support page. I believe I have all of my questions answered except for the exchange stuff.

I will call my broker regarding how TDA may interact with NT regarding routing the orders using NT. It is confusing to me because within TDA I only have the option for direct routing to either NSDQ (INET) or ARCA. So I would assume I am limited to those options as well. But I will check with my broker as you suggested.

However, can you answer a more specific NT question on this...

I believe that the "Default" exchange setting is an NT default, not an industry standard default. Yet I see no explanation for what this is. Are there a certain group of exchanges that are classified as default? Is this posted somewhere?

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

kinsei, if you press F1 in the software the context sensitive helpguide is opend for review.

Many stocks can be traded on multiple exchanges, you want to check which one offers you the best liquidity and spread, some brokers will do this for you in their routing automatically.

The default exchange is just for NT internal use, you want to check this and the 'home' exchange of your instrument in the setup process.

[kinsei]

The default exchange is just for NT internal use, you want to check this and the 'home' exchange of your instrument in the setup process.

Thank you for that answer that is exactly what I was looking to know.