Difference between "Sell" and "Close"?

[MatthewLesko]

Using simulation, after I bought a contract in a market, the chart stopped moving so that was a little concerning. I clicked "Sell" since I couldn't see anything and closed the program out and am checking with support on what more I've got to figure out with all this craziness.
I come back a few hours later and notice the Continuum demo account is showing a green number on unrealized PnL so I thought to click "Accounts" and select what was in there and "close".
It then audibly said order fulfilled and back on the chart i see a "Close".
So can someone help me understand the difference between the two? I guess I got lucky on this "trade" but this could have been bad if it was a real account and went down.

[AutomaticTradingSignals]

@MathewLesko You bought 2 contracts then Sold 1. This left your account long 1. Later you saw the positive unrealized open PnL on your Account due to this remaining long 1 position. You sold that with the close command.
Close will Sell OR Buy to Cover, which ever is needed, a number of contracts/shares required to cause the account to be flat ( neither long or short ). I believe it's for the instrument selected in the chart trader only if you choose Close from the Chart Trader. Not sure. NT will have to weigh in on that. You chose Close from the Accounts tab and in there you can't select an instrument so maybe there it flattens your account across all instruments?

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

AutomaticTradingSignals, thank you for providing the explanation to MatthewLesko.

MatthewLesko, if you want to close the position when you submitted the sell order, you would set the order quantity to 2 instead of 1 as you were in a long position for 2 contracts.

Yes, if you click the Close button in ChartTrader, it will close the position for the instrument selected in the chart.

If you right click in the Control Center-->Accounts-tab and select "Close All Selected Account Positions", it will close all positions on the selected account.

[MatthewLesko]

Hi thanks for the follow-up. What I don't recall is if it defaults to a number to sell. I'm not sure I would have selected "1" when I sold.

[AutomaticTradingSignals]

Hi thanks for the follow-up. What I don't recall is if it defaults to a number to sell. I'm not sure I would have selected "1" when I sold.

MatthewLesko If you experiment with a sim account and the Chart Trader you'll learn a lot.

[MatthewLesko]

Hello thanks for the information, I didn't catch that.
Do you also know how to get the buy/sell icons to show on the chart?
On some charts it shows while on others it does not.

[NinjaTrader_RyanS]

Hello,

You can hit CTRL+E with the chart selected to toggle through the buy/sell plot options, or these can be changed in the data series window as well.

[MatthewLesko]

Ok thanks, yeah it works on some charts while on other Ctrl E doesn't toggle anything. On MNQ it works but on RTY it doesn't.

[NinjaTrader_RyanS]

Hello,

Is the RTY chart the primary data series on the chart? Are their executions on this instrument to the account selected in chart trader? For instance, if sim101 trades, is chart trader set to sim101?

[AutomaticTradingSignals]

Hello,

You can hit CTRL+E with the chart selected to toggle through the buy/sell plot options, or these can be changed in the data series window as well.

Shortcuts like these are not well known! It would be great if the tool tip for the plot executions settings in the data series dialog would show the short cut. I'd like to suggest that as well as a tooltip when you hover over the Workspaces menu item that tells you the short cut to cycle through the workspaces. I already forgot after learning of it yesterday.