Live Bitcoin/USD in Ninja (At Last!)

[Lucero]

yes, you are right about it being underdeveloped, and you do lose all your data if you restart nt, and what I do if I have to is to try and restart nt just before I go to bed, and I've got enough data to trade with in the morning. I never use volume data so I don't care about it being correct. Despite all these shortcomings I still believe (paper) trading on Bitmex is a lot more real than that on CME or CBOE in terms of the actual price movements.

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

I haven't tested this with the BitMEX addon specifically, however, you could enable 'record live data as historical':

• Control Center > Tools
• Market Data > Enable 'Record live data as historical' > OK

This should record any incoming data as historical data which NinjaTrader should then be able to access. Keep in mind that real-time data must be actively flowing into the platform for this to work. In other words, NinjaTrader must be connected for the data to be recorded.

[jmcg618]

If you are not using volume in your trading you could get perfect data from kinetick. The cme index is an average of gdax/itbit/bitstamp/krakken... doens't get better than that for tick for tick papertrading... not sure how far back the data goes though, a few months maybe... I don't have kinetick setup as I think it's overpriced.. for my trading volume is critical however, and I need stable, high quality, and reliable data, period. I'm just not convinced by the Bitmex api for ninjatrader at this time. Furthermore, I don't see how an exchange can bill itself as an exchange for 'professionals' when their order entry platform doesn't offer a basic oco or attached stop functionality. No dom price ladder, no chart trading, etc... so not professional. And of course their trading engine freezes you out as soon as their market maker bots decide to jam trading engine with high frequency orders. Sounds like a bucket shop scam to me if I've ever heard of one... Imagine you are trading in a fast moving market and unable to choose a price quickly on a dom, if you get filled it will be at a terrible price, otherwise you order will bounce due to their freeze rule. Imagine you do get filled and you now want to put a stop in and they disconnect you or freeze you out... their market makers take your money, and they've already got more traders than their system can handle so out you go and in comes the fresh meat... no thanks, I will wait for the volume to come in on the cboe, or at least for one of these bitcoin exchanges to offer a some kind of professional level order entry... a basic oco option on their platform would suffice...

[Lucero]

What pisses me off is that all that bitcoin stuff is supposed to be high-tech, right? And what you get is you can't even connect a desktop trading program so that it functions normally. it's like "if you want something done, do it yourself."

[jmcg618]

The only thing these buckshop owners care about is lining their pockets with your money, nothing new about that... there is a sucker born every second in these bitcoin times, and they know it... I heard Michael Novogratz on bloomberg just last week mention Bitfinex as the best and most liquid venue out there, and the owner of the exchange has a hedge fund that arbs Bitfinex with Bitstamp, so seems to me this is the best bet at the moment. Haven't read about any problems with their platform or trading engine freezing like Bitmex. In fact it is a policy of Bitmex, a freaking policy to freeze out your orders... what kind of exchange is that? And really 3.3x leverage is all you need in this market. There are so many trading opportunites, and so much volatility, if you are consistent, you can run up a small account with 3.3x. 10 is a lot, max I would ever use. In bitcoin, 5x would be perfect, imo. I will try Bitfinex in the new year. There is a demo for their ninjatrader front end api, and I will give it a try in January before buying it... It's sold by https://ninjatools.studio/ , guy there said his Poloniex api loads tick data better and faster, but not interested in Poloniex. Bitfinex has the volume, real volume, not fake market maker ultra-leveraged volume at Bitmex...

[Lucero]

but it was hacked, too, which is not too good. ok, let's wait for Bitfinex to start registering new accounts again) why don't you like Poloniex, btw?

[jmcg618]

lower leverage offered, and higher fees, plus have heard about issues with Poloniex trading engine freezing up, same as Bitmex, etc.. same bs as the old school forex bucketshops back 10+years ago, to your point about technology, it's ten years on and it even worse than the ancient forex bucketshops! crappy trading engines and less functionality for the trader... most every exchange seems to have some reviews indicating this kind of bs... been there done that from another lifetime ago... don't need the aggravation.. perfectly happy to just trade the boring old spoos on cme till something interesting comes along. and Bitcoin is very interesting. I love the way it trades, and I love the fact that it is decentralized etc.. sadly there doesn't seem to be a fair and honest venue for serious traders to take advantage of it as yet, but it will evolve rapidly this year... a bit worried about Bitfinex becoming the Bre-X of the 21st century, for sure, but I would never put serious money on an exchange like that... if Bitmex is serious about becoming a professional futures exchange, then they should seriously invest some of their billions into a robust trading engine and proper front end for point and click individual day traders, right now they are just catering to their market making hft bot clientele, probably their own at that, just smells like total bucketshop at the moment... the Bitfinex ownership/management may not be any more credible, but at least they have what is regarded as the best trading engine in the business at the moment... and the liquidity is real with max leverage at 3.3x, not potentially phony market making a la Bitmex, that is unless they are printing untethered Tether, which seems to be the big concern at the moment. I'm just waiting to see if they provide an audit for it, and how that all plays out before going in... If it proves to be legit and safe, I'd have no problem parking some money in it...

[jmcg618]

Can anybody who is using the ninjatrader bitmex api tell me if simultaneously running the api to bitmex and connecting to a futures brokerage for live trading causes any issues in NT8?

Thanks

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

There is no technical limitation to having Bitmex and a live futures connection active simultaneously.

[jmcg618]

I see that Bitmex is listed under Ninjatrader's official data vendors, but it is not listed as an Ecosystem member/vendor. Does this mean that their api product that delivers their data is not of high enough quality to be included in the Ecosystem?

[jmcg618]

There is no technical limitation to having Bitmex and a live futures connection active simultaneously.

Hi Patrick,

I am interested in getting tick data from Bitmex for Ninjatrader 8. Somewhere in the thread you or another support hand indicated that saving chart data as historical would provide a solution. My issue is that I'm connected to CME via CQG and utilized tick replay on these charts. Does this present a problem for updating my CQG datafeed charts with refreshed historical data on restart?

[NinjaTrader_DrewO]

jmcg618,

Thanks for your post.

Tick replay is a property that can be optionally enabled on NinjaScript indicators and strategies which will ensure that the market data (bid/ask/last) that went into building a bar is loaded in the exact sequence of market data events and should not have an effect on your ability to record historical data.

[jmcg618]

If I set record live data as historical, does that imply that any errors in the recorded chart data will not get refreshed and corrected with accurate historical data from the server upon restart?

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

The suggestion to enable 'record live data as historical' in the context of this thread was because no historical data was being received from the data provider and therefore it would be useful to record the live data as historical.

If you receive historical data from your data provider, then enabling 'record live data as historical' is redundant. In fact, it is specifically mentioned in the help guide to NOT enable 'record live data as historical' if you receive historical data from your data provider:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/en-us/options_marketdata.htm

If both 'record live data as historical' and 'get data from server' are enabled and your data provider supplies historical data, you may run into issues where data is not refreshed as expected.

[jmcg618]

Is there a way to manually force a refresh of my CQG/CME data while the record live feature is enabled. I want to be able to record/capture Bitmex tick data without compromising the integrity of my CME data.