Initial Stub Position

[cgeorgan]

Hi-

This relates specifically to NT strategies, the concept of historical performance, and "synchronization."

When starting up a strategy for the first time, that strategy will typically show an initial position that came about from historical performance.

If you allow this strategy to continue, and allow it to begin issuing orders, the strategy will have no problem keeping track of its own position - however, NT's order tracker will begin to screw things up.

That is, if I start a strategy and it shows me - historically - that I'm "long 5 contracts of XYZ", it does not insert that stub trade into the record books. Thus, if I were to exit out of those historical contracts, the very first "trade" NT records is a short entry of 5 XYZ - not a long exit of 5 XYZ.

Put another way, if you have any sort of synchronization on, NT needs to insert the initial stub position into the record of trades so that PnL, position tracking, etc all remain correct.

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

cgeorgan,

How this behaves is completely controllable by which settings you use. If you use SyncAccountPosition = true then it will automatically place a trade to match your account position to that strategy start position of 5 long. If you do not use SyncAccountPosition you would have no such "stub" order. If you are not using SyncAccountPosition, but are still using ImmediatelySubmit, then yes, you will start your first action as a sell. This is accurate behavior based on your settings of just continuing along as-if you had the correct account position. If you proceed with this option it is assumed you already had a prior 5 long to match with your strategy's actions. If you did not then your account position may very well be doing the wrong action and it is strongly advised against doing it this way. If you need to add a stub record later on you would need to manually add it via the right click>Add in the Executions tab of the Control Center.

Please review the information here for the options available: http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/h..._positions.htm