Advanced connection reliability/failure handling, other error reporting/handling

[Calebg]

I've been working with NT for a couple year now and have a fairly decent knowledge of many aspects regarding NT, data connections etc. To keep it brief, I'm looking to start a thread regarding ADVANCED technique/knowledge as it relates to making NT reliable as possible in terms of managing positions while away from the computer (physically, or even if just sleeping). The lack of reliability that I have experienced firsthand in these areas is keeping me from running my own strategies in the ways that I envisioned, because I currently just don't trust my setup enough to step away from it.

The best I can break it down in order to achieve the piece of mind I would like to would be like this:

Reliable data connection:
The data disconnects from Interactive Brokers and TDAmertrade alone make NT unfit for the purposes of doing anything but in-person trading for me. The disconnects are too many to count and occur at any and all times of the day, including many instances of appearing connected, but really not properly connected. Will using Kinetick or any other data provider greatly improve this experience?

Error handling (data or otherwise) and notification:
Almost a worse issue than an outright data disconnect/fail is the case in which the data appears to NT to be working, but in fact something is not quite right. I've seen this type of situation numerous times and wonder what, if anything, anyone else does to mitigate these false-positive type of situations. Aside from that, if anyone can share their advance techniques for general error handling/messaging I'd love to hear it.

Other messaging, automation, error-avoiding, error-handling tricks, sanity checks
Please share if you can offer any tips which can help make NT more realistically useful/reliable for automated away-from the desk trading. I don't expect to eliminate ALL risks to letting NT run by itself, but currently I don't feel like I'm even in the "useable" territory as so far as unattended Ninjatrader goes. For my purposes, Ninjatrader would be good enough without actual order execution if it meant that a given strategy reliably runs unattended and for a long time while sending messages when its signals were hit. Seems like a modest goal, but currently I feel far from it.

[NinjaTrader_Kate]

Hello Calebg,

Thank you for your post.

Our position would be that you should ALWAYS monitor your automated trading strategies. If, for example, NinjaTrader has placed an entry order, like a limit order, for example, from a strategy and your power goes out, and you're not around to know that, the order could fill as it's already on the broker's servers in most cases. If that happened, and you were not around to monitor, not only would it not be able to send you notifications, you'd be in an unprotected position without knowing it since protective orders would only be placed after NinjaTrader receives the notification of the fill from the broker. That could very well be quite catastrophic to your account.

Keep in mind that Kinetick is solely a data provider. If you've got that connected but your actual account is through your IB connection, for example, if that connection goes down, simply having the data from Kinetick coming in wouldn't mean you could still route orders to the IB account as it wouldn't be connected.

As for connection issues, you could look at creating an indicator that will alert you to connection loss (assuming your internet connection is up and running otherwise):

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/onconnectionstatusupdate.htm

I'll leave this thread open for users to chime in with any helpful hints they may have.

Please let us know if we may be of further assistance to you.