Chart update frequency

[AH369]

Hello ,
I am constantly experiencing slow performance with NT8 platform specially at high volume to times like news time and also when market opens at 9:30 EST.
I was wondering if NinjaTrader development team has any plans to add the option of custom update frequency for NT8 charts like NT7 charts ?
This is a very important feature specially when there are many resource draining indicators are loaded to large number of charts . Thank you for your attention.

[brucerobinson]

My conclusion, and I don’t think it would be speaking out of turn to say also that of most Users who have participated in discussions on this subject is that it is very unlikely any time soon, if ever.

It’s also unlikely you’ll get such a statement/direct answer from NT, rather some asinine ‘we’re always considering feature requests, priority is based on, can’t tell you, when implemented will be in Release Notes blah blah’.

Meantime, in case you are unaware, there is a User app called ‘Tick Refresh’ which provides the NT7 functionality you refer to which was removed in NT8, a retrograde step.

I am happy to attest to the robustness of the indicator which I have used daily since it became available and which has been instrumental in developing a workspace which suits my needs and rarely lags beyond a couple of hundred ms irrespective of conditions - not possible with the stock platform. The indicator in and of itself has no perceptible impact. That is not to say use or misuse of its functionality will not.

Hope this helps & good luck.

Support will no doubt assist with general platform performance guidelines and any specific ‘likely suspects’ in your particular Setup.

KR

[AH369]

Thank you Bruce for your input . I will certainly try it and see if it suites my needs.

[AH369]

Hello again Bruce ,
Are you sure this indicator works correctly?
To test this indicator I have set the refresh value to 5000 which means it should update every 5 seconds but it updates like the other charts.

[jeronymite]

AH369 The way I read the Tick Refresh indicator, it sets a frequency of update independent of the underlying rate already set in NinjaTrader 8. That means you will really only see a difference that matters when the rate is faster than the default in the platform.

If the default rate in NinjaTrader 8 is every 250msec, setting an interval in this indicator that is greater than that would be rather pointless, although it would still have effect, but just at some time between two already scheduled refreshes. Your 5 second example means you would have an additional refresh every 5 secs, but still with the regular "hard-coded" NinjaTrader 8 refreshes in the meantime.

Thanks.

[brucerobinson]

Never tried Tick Refresh to slow refresh intervals - no doubt you’re both correct, thanks @jeronymite.

So you’re stuffed with hard-coded 250ms minimum whether you want/need it or not. Dumb blunt instrument.

[jeronymite]

brucerobinson Just for clarity, setting an interval less than 250msec should be effective, and will increase the frequency of refresh. For example, setting an interval of 100msec should refresh every 100msec. It's only intervals longer than 250msec that will be spaced "at odds" with the default 250msec, with the 250msec happening regardless. In effect, the hard-coded 250msec sets the maximum refresh interval.

Thanks.

[brucerobinson]

jeronymite indeed!
Hurleydood originally coded Tick Refresh in response to this Feature Request to make Chart Refresh faster.
https://ninjatrader.com/support/foru...250ms-possible

Hard-coding 250ms in NT8 simultaneously took away the User ability in NT7 to increase refresh rate where the User wished, but also to decrease it where not necessary in order to conserve resources - as AH369 seeks to do, so sorry AH369 seems you’re out of luck (unless jeronymite can re-code TR to overcome the hard-coded forced 250ms to a User-defined value >250ms & stop hard coded forced refresh ;-)

NT8 sets 250ms as maximum and minimum the same at 250ms. So you don’t get what many Users do want (700+ posts on the thread, and there are many others) and do get what you don’t want (250ms whether you need it or not). Tick Refresh gives ability to make it faster, but not slower as AH369 wants to try, to conserve resources. I hadn’t appreciated Tick Refresh only facilitated faster, I learn something new every day whether I want to or not :-)

I use 100ms only on fast charts and not on any others (hence at 250ms). Never had any problems due to Tick Refresh at 100ms (since 2018!). Little help to AH369 unfortunately - sorry :-(

[AH369]

Thank you guys for your help and input .

As I stated in my initial post I have a a lot of issues with NT8 charts falling behind during high volume market activities.
Since I have many charts open and load many indicators to each chart , I need to somehow reduce the resources used by my PC .
I do use "Tickrefresh" for the few charts that need to be refreshed faster than 250ms but for other charts such as 60 min , Daily , Weekly and Monthly charts there is no need for fast refresh times. However I can remedy this issue by closing many essential charts that I need during trading hours but that defeats the whole purpose .
I wished NT team would think of some kind of solution because during high volume times it is almost impossible to trade with NT8 platform when charts fall several minutes behind.

Not to mention these delay issues happen with a fairly up to date PC . ( Intel 11900k + 64gb DDR4 Ram + Intel Optane P5800X SSD) and on top of that NT8 is installed on Ram and Document folder is also located in Ram.

[AH369]

When I put up this post I was looking for a way to reduce the load on my system by controlling the refresh rate of some of my charts so I can somehow prevent the lags on my charts during heavy volume hours. However I have noticed this problem occurs when I use Kinetick or Continuum as my feed but when I use Interactive Brokers my charts don't fall behind.

Does anyone know the reason?
Or can anyone know of any other data feeds that may act like IB ?

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello AH369,

Thanks for the post and questions.

In general, we would not expect Interactive Brokers connections to be less susceptible to performance issues where the platform gets overloaded and falls behind.

Somethings to consider why you are seeing what you are seeing:

• Interactive Brokers has data pacing rules that limit how much data may be subscribed at one. NinjaTrader may not be processing the same amount of data where performance issues are seen with Kinetick and Continuum
• Historical Tick data is not offered to NinjaTrader - It will take less CPU time to build charts because historical tick data is unavailable.
• Interactive Brokers does not offer bid/ask stamped tick data. This is needed for Order Flow analysis, if this is missing, there would be far less to calculate

We want to be clear that increasing the refresh rate is not recommended to make charts more responsive during high volatility, it will actually add more CPU load since the chart has to re-render everything with every refresh.

Decreasing the refresh rate will only get you so far. We still have to consider all of the single tick analysis that is happening which tends to be the culprit behind performance related issues.

[sonia0101]

Hi Jim something caught my eye in your response above and that is this statement:

"In general, we would not expect Interactive Brokers connections to be less susceptible to performance issues where the platform gets overloaded and falls behind."

So if NT is aware there platform is "getting overloaded"
Why don't they address this? Seems like common sense this should be a priority. As well perusing back through many different forum posts this has been an ongoing issue for years. People actually state they are still using NT7 because of the bugginess of NT8.
I also while perusing have seen many that have no issues which is great. Though that does not excuse NT for not taking a more in depth look at what is troubling many. More importantly just fix it.
Have a great weekend

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello sonia0101,

As with all computer programs, NinjaTrader would be overloaded if you give it too much to do. This is not a NinjaTrader-only issue, but is seen often with trading platforms and resource intensive applications that demand a lot of the CPU. If the system gets over loaded, it wont be able to keep up.

The platform being overloaded depends on what is set up in the workspace, and the market volatility.

In my last post I listed some specifics which would be different between a test with Interactive Brokers and a test with Kinetick/Continuum. Those differences alone would explain why there would be less to calculate with the Interactive Brokers connection.

If something is still standing out, we need specifics to elaborate.

1. Have the items from my last reply been noted?
2. What specific instruments, what is in the workspace, when is this being tested? (I.E. Are Tick Replay, Order Flow or other resource intensive tools used? At market open when there is greater volatility?)

An exact copy of the workspace and steps to encounter when testing can help us make sense of what you may be seeing.

[AH369]

Hello Jim,

Ever since you mentioned that the reason NinjaTrader gets overloaded is due to intensive demand on the CPU , I have been tracking my CPU usage and it is constantly running around 20 to 30% capacity and rarely goes above 50 percent . So don't you think there could be another reason for NT8 falling behind ?

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello AH369,

While NinjaTrader 8 is multi threaded, it cannot fully utilize all cores for processing realtime data while maintaining synchronicity in the parts of the platform that require it.

If you look at Windows Task Manager, be sure to view Logical cores, since this will show a breakdown of the work done on individual hardware threads.

We will not fully reach 100% utilization on the whole CPU, but it will just take overloading one core (and that core is performing the instrument processing) for that instrument to fall behind.

Another thread where we discuss performance matters and NinjaTrader's threading model may be found here: https://ninjatrader.com/support/foru...te#post1204702

Past all of this detail - If you see something that still stands out where you see impact in Continuum but not Interactive Brokers, please attach workspace file and I could have a look and give more direct feedback.