MB Trading questions

[cnecorp]

I am posing these questions on the behalf of myself and several other traders.

We own lifetime licenses (one on subscription) for Ninja through Zen and were considering upgrading to multi licenses to use MB Trading micros for our R&D trades.

Questions

1. Can we use the DOM to place and manage our orders? We tried this with a free demo account and it does not appear to work.
2. Checking through the forum, there were many posts regarding "no historical data" for MBT. There was a note regarding this being resolved with NT 7. Is this true i.e. do we now have historical data for MBT?
   • If so, is this only on NT 7 or can we use it with 6.5
   • If not, can we use our Zen feed for the history excluding JPY of course

Thanks

[Crassius]

You should look at the online documentation on both versions to understand the differences in v6.5 and 7. Both applications have a section in the documentation on historical data. It's painless and thorough and not very long.

V7 provides an Historical Data Manager that allows easy inport/export/editing and downloading of historical data. I nice improvement over 6.5.

Your main area of concern should center around differences in what kind of data and for what look back period that data is available between Zen and Mb Trading. Zen has everything... it includes historical tick data which allows NT to build any kind of bar because it has the data down to tick resolution.

Here's the link for a chart from the documentation for 6.5 that gives the differences in data that various providers...Zen and MB included.

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/helpguide.html

If you are charting spot FX on MB Trading, you will have time based data only....

Real tick data is nonexistent for spot FX. Real tick data... like you get with a futures contact is each tick respresents one actual transaction... one contract actually traded hands at that price...

Spot FX ticks are just changes in quotes. They don't represent an actual sale. For that reason, I use Zen and chart the FX futures contract. You add the forward points to get the spot equivilent. The ticks mean more to me as they represent an actual sale, not just a quote. I get real volume information as a side benefit.

Because FX is spikey in nature, I find tick, volume or range bars chart smoother, and indicators behave better on the smoother charts. To use any of them you have to have real tick data to chart.

[cnecorp]

Thanks Crassius. I will go through the link WRT to historical data. Do you know if we can use the DOM to trade MBT micros or are we stuck with the archaic navigator that they use?

[Crassius]

I have not traded through the NT Dom. I use NT for charting the 6E futures contract with a zen-fire feed, and manual order entry through Navigator.

I am sure however that it is possible, with the limitation that NT does not support all of the order types available at MB Trading.

Navigator has horrible charting, and the DOM is useless, but it does have a great selection of order types so that setup is suiting my needs for now. I have no idea how your licenses will play out using it on MB Trading. I would have to pay $60+ a month (I think that's right) to use NT for order entry, and I just don't see where I can justify the cost, as I am a day trader and in front of the computer all day anyway.

You have to use a special version of Navigator and run it with NT for NT to be used for order entry. I believe that is because there is a bridge between the two apps.

I am hoping that with the NT7 release MB will have better support for NT.

[cnecorp]

Yeah, I do the same currently, using Navigator to trade the micros but our group was hoping to be able to use the NT's DOM in place of Navigator if we went to the multi licensed platform.

I think its about $500 for the upgrade and I do agree with you that $60 pm is steep just for a better order entry system. Like you I am a day trader but I would not even consider taking larger trades ($12.50 per contract with Mirus) through Navigator. Risks are way too high and MB NAV has always failed me when the market jumps.

Cost me $180 on a $1 per contract trade last Thursday ($210 if you include lost profits). Was up $30, NAV froze and was down $180 by the time I got the order desk, imagine that on a $12.50 per contract trade (shudder).

Hopefully one of the NT specialists can confirm or deny if the NT DOM can be used for trading micros for sure, assuming that it will be more reliable (if the issue is with the MB servers, then neither DOM will help).

Don't really want to go NT7 just yet as I will have to convert all our custom indicators .

Thanks Matey.

[NinjaTrader_Chip]

Hello cnecorp,

With GAIN, lot size is set at an account level. As such, you would need to contact GAIN to have your account set to use mini or micro lots.

MB Trading supports the trading of micro lots. In this case just enter an order quantity of for example 1000 for a micro lot, 10000 for a mini lot and so on...

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

[cnecorp]

Chip,

Thanks for the reply. if I understand you correctly:

1. I CAN use the DOM (Ladder) to place and manage my orders.
2. I would set the tenth pip under options as per the instruction and enter
   - 1000 for a micro lot
   - 10000 for a mini lot
   - 100000 for a standard lot
3. The trades in demo will not show in my MBT account but live trades in a fully licensed MBT version will show in my MBT account.

Is this correct?
Also, what is the situation with historical data?

Thanks

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello cnecorp,

1. Correct, you can use the Dynamic SuperDOM to trade forex.

2. Correct. You could enter 0.01M (M stands for million) to submit a mini lot as well or 0.1M to submit a standard lot.

3. Correct, if you trade the sim101 account, orders remain internal and will not be routed to MBTrading.

Unfortunately historical data is not supported in NinjaTrader 6.5 with MBTrading. However, it is supported in NinjaTrader 7.

[cnecorp]

Thanks Jason.
Good to hear. Looks like I will have to convert my indicators after all.

[cnecorp]

Jason

One other question

Is there anyway we can use our Zen fire charts but trade our MB accounts using the DOM?

Reason is that the MB feed is time based only i.e. no volume charts available.

Thanks

[NinjaTrader_Chip]

Hello cnecorp,

Yes this is possible but would require you to have a brokerage account that uses Zen-Fire connection technology.

It is also important to understand how to connect to multiple data feeds with NinjaTrader. Check out the following resource:

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/helpguide.html?MultipleConnections1

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

[Crassius]

You should be able to connect to Zen-fire as a data source provider and MB Trading as a broker to do transactions. This is a very common setup as many like to have eSignal or Zen-fire data, as their data is often much cleaner, unfiltered and more reliable than many brokers provide.

Brokers are in the brokerage business first. They provide data second. eSignal and Zen-fire have data as their primary line of business, and are considered the best industry reference standard for data.

Some brokers, IB for example, do not provide every tick of data, they save bandwidth by filtering the data and transmitting a subset that is representative of the market, but not every tick. Many IB customers want every tick from a clean source, and therefore pay for data afrom a premium data provider, even though their broker has data available for free.

My advice to you would be to chart the futures data for currencies anyway. As I said in a previous post, the ticks in the futures market represent an actual sale...where money was put at risk, and has real volume information attached to it.

Spot FX data, like MB Trading provides is only a change in quotes... there is nothing changing hands behind every single tick.... whichever Bid/Ask is the best ends up on top sometimes only for a split second, and is what you would be charting. It lacks the solid commitment to price that an actual sale represents.

In a fast moving market what you will see is someone on the ECN will have a bid/ask in 40 or 50 points below the market... it will rise to the top for a split second sometimes well after the broader market has already moved on. This is unwanted noise in your chart, causing a less accurate picture of the market.

Check out this page in the documentation that contains these relevent lines:

NinjaTrader supports multiple simultaneous connections to different connectivity providers and in some cases, to the same connectivity provider allowing you to:

• <LI class=rvps1>Connect to and trade through multiple brokers simultaneously
• Connect to your broker and your data feed provider simultaneously

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/H...helpguide.html

I don't know what your datad eal is w/ Zen, you could use them or you could also use eSignals data only package to feed NT.... or, as I will tryout once v7 is in full release, the much less expensive Kinnetick data service.

[cnecorp]

Thanks Crassius.

I do agree with you that the Zen volume charts are much smoother.

I have a full account with Mirus and thus have full access to the Zen feeds.

I'll go through the links and sus it out.

[cnecorp]

Thanks for the prompt response Chip. I do have a full account with Mirus who is with Zen.

I'll go through the links and check it out.

[cnecorp]

Chip and Crassius

Thanks very much for you assistance on this. It works beautifully. My group will be upgrading to multi-broker licenses shortly.