NT8 showing TD Ameritrade open positions that are actually closed

[pacman197]

Hi,

I purchased NT8 over this past weekend after testing it out for a few months. I've searched the forum for an answer, and it seems like a lot of folks had API issues with TDA last year, but the last post I saw indicated that those had mostly been cleared up. Today I was going to attempt my first live trade against one of my TDA accounts manually to check how the platform operates. Note that I have 2 TDA accounts connected to NT8. I submitted a chart trader order which filled, and then a few minutes later submitted the exit order that also filled (no issues). It shows both transactions filled within the console under the orders tab, the executions tab, and the log tab.

Later in the day I made a few trades on my other TDA account using the Think or Swim desktop platform (NOT NT8). As usual these trades worked fine. This evening, as I was reviewing strategy trades on my sim account in NT8, I happened to click on the Positions tab, and for some reason the positions are still showing Open from BOTH live TDA accounts. I honestly had no idea that trades made outside of the NT8 platform would even get sent across the API to NT8, but apparently they do. Regardless, can you please tell me why these positions are showing in the Open status, while at the same time you can clearly see that they were closed on the Orders, Executions, and Logs tab?

Thanks,
Sam

[NinjaTrader_JustinD]

Hello Sam,

Thank you for your message.


Do these positions disappear correctly if you restart your connection to TDA? Anything position/account-related is updated by the broker's servers rather than being internally generated in NinjaTrader, so if they are still appearing in NinjaTrader after you closed them externally, it just means that it hasn't been updated by them through your connection. A reconnect to TDA should get it to send updated positions information to NinjaTrader 8.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

[pacman197]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your quick response. Yes, they both clear if I disconnect/reconnect. However, I think this may pose an issue if/when I enable a strategy that performs multiple trades on the same ticker in one day. One of these trades was completed entirely (entry and exit) within the NT8 interface, while the other was entirely completed (entry and exit) external to NT8. However, both show as open positions at the end of the day. Also, all logs/orders/execution tabs within the NT8 console show filled orders for entry and exits on these trades. So, maybe I don't understand how NT8 works. It clearly has the info regarding the closing of the trades, but it seems that the "Positions" tab was awaiting some extra signal via the API from TDA, or it simply didn't "read" the signal returned properly?

Thanks,
Sam

[NinjaTrader_JustinD]

Hello Sam,

Thank you for your response.


At the root of it, NinjaTrader simply never received any positions update after you closed these orders externally. Unfortunately, NinjaTrader 8 doesn't have any control over positions updates from a broker, but if these positions remained on your Control Center even after they were closed, NinjaTrader just never got anything from the TDA servers that said your account was Flattened.

If you are taking any trades outside of NinjaTrader that are not being reported to the platform, a disconnect/reconnect may be the only way that TDA sends the information to NinjaTrader rather than only to the software/website you submitted the trades from originally.


Please let me know if you have any additional questions.