Account/Strategy sync with TD Ameritrade

[seahn]

I have written a strategy that places an order to buy shares of a stock 15 seconds before the end of the trading session based on certain criteria. This is in a TD Ameritrade account. The strategy is for a very long term investment account so it never sells any shares, only adds shares from time to time. I am not sure how to handle the account and strategy syncing. The account already has shares in it when the strategy is started. I DO NOT want to have these shares sold. From reading some posts on syncing on this forum, I believe if I enable strategy syncing then all my shares will be sold when the strategy starts, is this correct? How do I handle syncing so that my shares are never sold yet I can place orders to buy more shares using the strategy? Every time I start the strategy I get a message that it is not synced, can I just run the strategy without syncing and do no damage? This is all very convoluted in my mind, I just want to buy some shares at the end of day based on my strategy without having to deal with any syncing stuff. thanks

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Hi seahn, unfortunately you're understanding for the limitation on the TDA account is correct. So your script would just add to the long position, it would not manage any exits for it?

[seahn]

Hi seahn, unfortunately you're understanding for the limitation on the TDA account is correct. So your script would just add to the long position, it would not manage any exits for it?

Yes, the strategy only adds to long positions, never exits. I will manually sell shares many years from now when I am retired. My question, how can I run this strategy without the possibility of messing up the account i.e. exiting the position. If I just ignore the "not synced" messages, will that affect the account? I have not tried doing this live because I am not certain what will happen. Can you clarify what will happen if I do no sync and place orders to buy? I have to say this seems to me to be very odd behavior to say it mildly to have a strategy liquidate accounts like that. A simple popup at strategy startup stating "You have positions in your account do you wish to add these to your strategy?" would seem to me to be a simple way to allow the user options on what to do. Thanks

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

seahn, currently there's no concept to have the strategy adopt account position, but we're working on this item for our next major platform update.

If you don't chose to sync the script will not touch your account and execute per it's strategy logic.

The limitation is in place as a special order name tagging is needed for the TDA connection, i.e. if you're account is long and you wanted to sell (exit) that position you would need to send the signal with a sell signal name, a sell short would not be accepted here (not allowing to cross like that).

If you don't care about managing any prior strategy generated position, the WaitUntilFlat mode without sync would be good, the script would then trade the next live generated signal.