Auto Trading on a Mac

[pbailey19]

I just spent half an hour with Technical Support at Mirus Futures, trying to get my demo Zen-Fire account to connect successfully. It was, as the kids say, an "epic fail". After trying several possible fixes, I was told by Mirus that "we really don't recommend for our users to use Macs". He suggested that I apply for a web-based account, but I declined, because I'm interested in auto-trading with NinjaTrader.

I run NinjaTrader 7 on a virtual PC, under Parallels 9, and I haven't had any trouble whatsoever with the NinjaTrader application, or with my TD Ameritrade data feed, or with my Kinetick data feed. So I don't understand what the problem is with Zen-Fire.

I am not writing this post to bash Zen-Fire. I'm writing to appeal to any NinjaTrader-on-a-Mac users: are you successfully auto-trading from your Mac, and what combinations of data feeds and brokers are you using? (When I say "successfully", I'm talking about technical success, not financial success.)

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

Hi,

Thanks for your report - we'll leave this thread open for other users to share their comments.

In terms of your issue, I'm not aware of anything that would prevent you from using NinjaTrader w/ Zen-Fire through Parallels 9. So we may look into this further, can you please send us your log and trace files from the session in which you were trying to connect?

Please send me your log and trace files for today so that I may look into what occurred.

You can do this by going to the Control Center-> Help-> Mail to Support.

Please reference the following this thread in your email.

[pbailey19]

I appreciate the desire to help, but I didn't have any luck sending the support e-mail with the log attachment. Maybe another Mac issue?

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

Please send an email to support[at]ninjatrader[dot]com and include your most recent log and trace files, Attn: Matthew in the Subject line and a reference to this thread.

You will find the log file in the Documents > NinjaTrader 7 > Log folder.

* The log file will be named ‘log.20131122.txt’

You will find the trace file in the Documents > NinjaTrader 7 > Trace folder.

* The trace file will be named ‘trace.20131122.txt’

Please attach both of these files to your next response. If these files are over 4MB, please let me know and I can respond with alternative instructions.

[pbailey19]

I resolved the issue with my Mirus Futures / Zen-Fire connection. Now I have a chance to evaluate the setup, and test out my automated strategy. But I'd still like to keep this thread open, to collect the experiences of other Mac users.

Are there any other Mac users out there who trade ES futures, using automated/mechanical trading via NinjaTrader? Is there any particular broker that works best when auto-trading futures? How about ease of transferring funds to/from the account? I'm surprised to learn that many of the 'favorite' brokers don't support electronic funds transfer (ACH) - some still rely on snail-mail paper checks!

[sledge]

Which was?

[QUOTE=pbailey19;353268]I resolved the issue with my Mirus Futures / Zen-Fire connection. Now I have a chance to evaluate the setup, and test out my automated strategy. But I'd still like to keep this thread open, to collect the experiences of other Mac users.

[/QUOTE

[pbailey19]

[QUOTE=sledge;353270]Which was?

I resolved the issue with my Mirus Futures / Zen-Fire connection. Now I have a chance to evaluate the setup, and test out my automated strategy. But I'd still like to keep this thread open, to collect the experiences of other Mac users.

[/QUOTE

Fault was totally local to my setup. For some reason, I had certain ports blocked on my local firewall. And those ports were necessary for the Zen-Fire feed. Once I cleaned up my router settings, everything connected.

Now, *keeping* the connection is another thing altogether. I'm finding that the Zen-Fire feed disconnects at least once a day. I'm still investigating the cause, but obviously, for my needs, it makes Zen-Fire questionable as a data feed solution for auto-trading.

[Robert Jen]

Robert here

This is new member want some education how to trade electronically. Can anyone guide me?

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hello,

Any of our educational partners can guide you through the world of electronic trading: http://www.ninjatrader.com/Ecosystem/NonBroker.php#80