Philips Capital trading rules

[jpatri]

Hello,
I use Philips Capital as my broker with Ninjatrader. I am confused on the 3:00pm rule. I placed and automated trader at 3:05pm. The trade did not go through and I was charged $50 by Philips Capital. I need to familiarize myself with all the “rules” of Philips Capital on when I can trade and when I cannot. Does anyone know of a link that explains Philips Capital trade times?
Thank you!

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello jpatri,

Thanks for your post.

Our Brokerage team is not active on the forums and they would be ones to ask for the most accurate information on margins with NinjaTrader Brokerage account (Phillip Capital is the clearing firm,) and when initial and intraday margin kick in. They may contacted at brokeragesupport [at] ninjatrader [dot] com. The forums are primarily directed for platform technical support and NinjaScript development.

Some publicly available resources on margin can be found on the links below.

https://ninjatrader.com/blog/futures-day-trading-margins-intraday-margin-1-2/

https://ninjatrader.com/blog/understanding-margin-in-futures-trading/

If you have any other inquires that are specific to the platform and not specific to your account, please do not hesitate to open a new ticket.

[jpatri]

Thank you!
Joe P.

[jpatri]

Hello,
I am still having a problem getting my head around this problem. I am using the Strategy Builder in Ninjatrader 8.

Here is the example: I have a strategy that may run to the end of the session and trigger "exit at end of session" auto closing the position at 4:00 pm central time. But every time a trade does this I am charged $50 because my trade goes past a "forbidden time. This also skews my strategy performance data because the report shows the some trades going to 4:00 pm mark then auto closing but apparently I can not really run a trade all the way to 4:00 pm, I believe it has to be closed before 3:15, which I can not figure out how to do on just the trades that may run to that time mark. If I use an "exit trade" function, all the trades running under that strategy will close at the same time, say 3:14 pm to avoid the penalty.

How can I run a trade all the way to 4:00 pm without triggering the $50 penalty?

Thank you for your patients with a newbie!
Regards,
Joe P.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello Joe,

NinjaTrader Brokerage should have been able to give you a clear note of when initial and intraday margin change. As I understand, this is 15 minutes before session close, but this is something that you would need to confirm with them as our support forum is managed by our Platform Customer Services teams, and not the Brokerage itself.

ExitOnSessionClose is controlled by session End in the Trading Hours template. You may change "Exit On Session Close Seconds" to adjust the strategy to exit earlier.

Keep in mind, if there is another entry signal after this time, ExitOnSessionClose will not prevent that entry from firing. You could consider adding time filters to control when your strategy may enter.

Creating time filters - https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...ateTimeFilters

[jpatri]

Hello Jim, Thank you, great help.
I used the "Exit on session close seconds" function with "End of Day" enabled in Strategy Builder. The brokerage end of day is 4:00 pm central time as you suggested, so I set the seconds at 1200, (20 min) so none of my trades can go longer than 3:40 pm. I saved the strategy with this setting change and closed everything down. I opened everything back up and ran Strategy Performance. All the trades closed at either the profit or loss target except for seven trades that went to 4:00 pm instead of closing out at 3:40 pm. What am I missing?
Regards.
Joe P.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello Joe,

With historical processing, there is no timer for ExitOnSessionClose so ExitOnSesionCloseSeconds will not work the same in the context of a backtest. You could use time checks to achieve exits triggered at the same time, however.

[jpatri]

Jim,
A time check would look like this?

Conditions and Actions:
set 1:
enter long position at 1:00pm

set 2:
time series > 3:40pm
exit long position
So if i start a trade at 1:00pm and it is still running at 3:40pm, set 2 would exit the position, avoiding the brokerage Intraday Margin End Time at 3:45pm.

Joe P.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello Joe,

Yes. Please also use the Strategy Analyzer and Playback Connection to test your strategy logic and observe the result.

Let us know if there is anything else we can do to help.

[jpatri]

Jim,
This works perfectly! Thank you for your help!
Joe P.