terminology used on the charts

[DudaoRJ]

I'm backtesting a strategy and coming across some non-self-explanatory terms while analyzing the trades on the chart. Where can find a glossary for terms like:

- sell short (as opposed to just "sell")
- buy to cover
- exit on close
- close position

Some of them seem pretty obvious, but I'd like to understand why NT calls some operations under certain names and then the same operations are called by different names in a subsequent occurrence.

PS: it's very annoying not to be able to load your preferred chart template on the strategy analyzer charts without losing the entrances and exists signals.

Thank you.

Yours
Eduardo

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello Eduardo,

Thank you for your post.

There is no listing of each definition. Below you will find my explanations.

• Sell Short, means to sell an instrument you do not own. Please take a look at the information at the following link: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortselling.asp
• Buy To Cover, would be to close the short position as taken above.
• Exit On Close, is a setting to close a position when the session ends.
• Close Position, this will put your position back to flat from the short or long position it was in.

Applying a template to a chart will remove the strategy and it's performance from the chart. Unfortunately, there is no way around this item.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

[DudaoRJ]

Patrick,

Thank you for your reply, some comments:

- sell short - I know what a sell short is, otherwise I wouldn't be developing automated strategies for a start. My question is why NT sometimes call it a sell and sometimes a sell short. What is the difference in NT perspective to name the action one way or the other?

- the same applies to "buy to cover" vs "close position". Trying to be more specific: under which circunstancies one is used as opposed to the other? What is different on the position, on the market, on the price, etc, that makes NT name one action a certain way?

I want to understand the choosing of names to interpret what the backtesting tool is doing. In MT4, for instance, it just opens and closes positions. No fancy names to care about. If the choice between one name or the other in NT to mark an action serves as means of understanding what it is exactly doing then I think it's worth getting to know NT parameters for naming. Don't you agree?

Thank you.

Eduardo

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Eduardo, there's no difference in action here, it's just the way NT tags / labels your order action - which is important for some equity trading providers as a specific action would be needed for example to SellShort a stock. For futures and fx spot the differences would not matter.