A few suggestions
I've been using NinjaTrader for a while now, and have come up with a list of suggestions that I think would dramatically improve the user's experience.
1. Create separate windows for the tabs that are currently in the Control Center - It's quite annoying to not be able to see my current orders and my current positions at the same time. Not only that, but I have to size and position the Control Center window in a way that will work for both of those tabs. Orders, positions, and accounts should be able to be launched as separate windows just like charts.
2. The order entry options available are too slow - If I want to quickly enter into a trade, I need to use a combination of the mouse and keyboard. This is very inefficient. All orders should be able to be completed quickly and easily without using the mouse at all.
If I want to sell 300 shares of XYZ up at 40.00, it would be nice if I could hit a keyboard combo like alt + S which would pop up a quick order entry window, type the number of shares, press tab, type the price, and hit enter (or something like this). I've seen videos of people entering orders on the Lightspeed platform and it looks way faster than with NinjaTrader.
At the very least, tabbing to the order size field on the Basic Entry or SuperDOM dialogs should select the text in that field, so that I don't have to delete it all before typing how many shares I want. There should also be a way to specify how many shares it increases or decreases by when I hit the up or down button. There is practically zero reason to even have the up and down buttons when they only increase the number by one. I have a hard time imagining someone using them for that purpose at all.
3. Create a detailed quote window - It seems like I need to look in a few different places to find the information I need, and sometimes this information isn't available at all for a stock I want to quickly check that isn't in my Market Analyzer. For example, say I want to check what % up or down a stock is today. How can I do this? I'd need to add it to the market analyzer first, and have that column in there too. In fact, it seems like quite a few pieces of necessary information are only available in the market analyzer which requires you to manually add each stock. This is really impractical.
A detailed quote window should have the stock's symbol, the company's name and maybe even sector if that information is available, last price, daily volume, daily up/down %, bid/ask spread, and so on. I'd suggest building the L2 and T&S windows into it but maybe some people wouldn't want that stuff.
Really, there needs to be a way to get the information available from the Market Analyzer without manually adding the stock to the Market Analyzer list. It's too slow to do this. If there was a window that had customizable columns in it that you could link to another window (like a chart), and it would look up that data for you, that would probably be ideal.
4. I should be able to choose my order routing - This is possibly the most shocking deficiency in NinjaTrader - there is no way to choose which exchange handles my order. Normally I wouldn't care about this, but I might care if a particular exchange gives me a better deal for adding liquidity.
5. Account performance should track shares traded - It's very annoying to be on a per-share commission but be unable to calculate how many shares I've traded.
6. Fix the price ladder display in the Dynamic SuperDOM for stocks - I don't understand what the deal is with this, but from my searching around on the forums it looks like you can never see anything except the inside bid/ask for stocks (but it works for futures). This pretty much makes the Dynamic SuperDOM useless for stock trading (or at least, it gives no advantage over using the Basic Entry window).
7. Add more options to the chart's display - I currently have 3 indicators on each chart, but the text in the upper left hand corner can sometimes cover parts of the chart I'm looking at. I really just want to turn that text off.
Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to specify the frequency of the horizontal or vertical grid lines. Sometimes there's a price marker on the right side but no grid line. Sometimes there is. I don't understand why this is.
8. Error popups are bad - If I'm unable to connect to my broker, I get dozens and dozens of popups that I have to click OK on, and I'm not sure they ever stop. I have to kill the process. There are also popups for bad historical data backfills which are annoying too - there's nothing I can do about it, there's no reason to annoy me with having to click OK.
These errors could be important but should be output somewhere, not creating popup windows. This is another excellent example of needing to use the mouse adding nothing to the UI experience except wasting time.
9. Scrolling back through historical data should load older data - If I want to look at older data, I don't think I should have to manually change the data series' properties. I'm not sure if NT uses the same API as proprietary broker programs, but when I used to be with TD Ameritrade, I'd typically have their StrategyDesk program running alongside NT so that I can look back through historical data.
10. UI themes - This probably isn't too high on the priority list, but I prefer darker colors for my charts and black backgrounds usually for anything else. Changing everything around to be like this is incredibly time consuming and I dread ever having to do it again if I have to re-install NT.
Thanks!
1. Create separate windows for the tabs that are currently in the Control Center - It's quite annoying to not be able to see my current orders and my current positions at the same time. Not only that, but I have to size and position the Control Center window in a way that will work for both of those tabs. Orders, positions, and accounts should be able to be launched as separate windows just like charts.
2. The order entry options available are too slow - If I want to quickly enter into a trade, I need to use a combination of the mouse and keyboard. This is very inefficient. All orders should be able to be completed quickly and easily without using the mouse at all.
If I want to sell 300 shares of XYZ up at 40.00, it would be nice if I could hit a keyboard combo like alt + S which would pop up a quick order entry window, type the number of shares, press tab, type the price, and hit enter (or something like this). I've seen videos of people entering orders on the Lightspeed platform and it looks way faster than with NinjaTrader.
At the very least, tabbing to the order size field on the Basic Entry or SuperDOM dialogs should select the text in that field, so that I don't have to delete it all before typing how many shares I want. There should also be a way to specify how many shares it increases or decreases by when I hit the up or down button. There is practically zero reason to even have the up and down buttons when they only increase the number by one. I have a hard time imagining someone using them for that purpose at all.
3. Create a detailed quote window - It seems like I need to look in a few different places to find the information I need, and sometimes this information isn't available at all for a stock I want to quickly check that isn't in my Market Analyzer. For example, say I want to check what % up or down a stock is today. How can I do this? I'd need to add it to the market analyzer first, and have that column in there too. In fact, it seems like quite a few pieces of necessary information are only available in the market analyzer which requires you to manually add each stock. This is really impractical.
A detailed quote window should have the stock's symbol, the company's name and maybe even sector if that information is available, last price, daily volume, daily up/down %, bid/ask spread, and so on. I'd suggest building the L2 and T&S windows into it but maybe some people wouldn't want that stuff.
Really, there needs to be a way to get the information available from the Market Analyzer without manually adding the stock to the Market Analyzer list. It's too slow to do this. If there was a window that had customizable columns in it that you could link to another window (like a chart), and it would look up that data for you, that would probably be ideal.
4. I should be able to choose my order routing - This is possibly the most shocking deficiency in NinjaTrader - there is no way to choose which exchange handles my order. Normally I wouldn't care about this, but I might care if a particular exchange gives me a better deal for adding liquidity.
5. Account performance should track shares traded - It's very annoying to be on a per-share commission but be unable to calculate how many shares I've traded.
6. Fix the price ladder display in the Dynamic SuperDOM for stocks - I don't understand what the deal is with this, but from my searching around on the forums it looks like you can never see anything except the inside bid/ask for stocks (but it works for futures). This pretty much makes the Dynamic SuperDOM useless for stock trading (or at least, it gives no advantage over using the Basic Entry window).
7. Add more options to the chart's display - I currently have 3 indicators on each chart, but the text in the upper left hand corner can sometimes cover parts of the chart I'm looking at. I really just want to turn that text off.
Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to specify the frequency of the horizontal or vertical grid lines. Sometimes there's a price marker on the right side but no grid line. Sometimes there is. I don't understand why this is.
8. Error popups are bad - If I'm unable to connect to my broker, I get dozens and dozens of popups that I have to click OK on, and I'm not sure they ever stop. I have to kill the process. There are also popups for bad historical data backfills which are annoying too - there's nothing I can do about it, there's no reason to annoy me with having to click OK.
These errors could be important but should be output somewhere, not creating popup windows. This is another excellent example of needing to use the mouse adding nothing to the UI experience except wasting time.
9. Scrolling back through historical data should load older data - If I want to look at older data, I don't think I should have to manually change the data series' properties. I'm not sure if NT uses the same API as proprietary broker programs, but when I used to be with TD Ameritrade, I'd typically have their StrategyDesk program running alongside NT so that I can look back through historical data.
10. UI themes - This probably isn't too high on the priority list, but I prefer darker colors for my charts and black backgrounds usually for anything else. Changing everything around to be like this is incredibly time consuming and I dread ever having to do it again if I have to re-install NT.
Thanks!
i still can't believe that. NT is doing the popups. some control can be written in there.
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