NT 7 vs NT 8 Time & Sales.

[Segwin]

Attached are the screen shots of both T&S windows. The one in NT8 seems always to be stuck on 100k. The one from NT7 keeps changing. Is there a way to have NT8 display like the NT7 window?

I'm on Forex through FXCM if that matters.

Thank you,

Terence

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Hello Segwin, and thank you for your question. Since forex is not centrally traded, FXCM has since 2004 sometimes provided data for hybrid historical and real time bars, and these were presented as tick information. In order to avoid ambiguity and to maintain consistency in presentation, NT8 simply sets this to 100k.

Please let us know if there are any other ways we can help.

[Segwin]

Hello Segwin, and thank you for your question. Since forex is not centrally traded, FXCM has since 2004 sometimes provided data for hybrid historical and real time bars, and these were presented as tick information. In order to avoid ambiguity and to maintain consistency in presentation, NT8 simply sets this to 100k.

Please let us know if there are any other ways we can help.

That's a shame. At least with NT7 I could see bigger orders come through and thereby get a feeling for how the order flow was. The block alert helped as well. I rely on T&S in NT7 a lot. Now the T&S window really does nothing and the block alert doesn't mean anything either in Forex. I think it was a bad decision to cripple T&S in NT8.

Hopefully they can program the T&S to function like NT7. If you could pass my request on I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Hello Segwin,


I have submitted a feature request to the product management team for the following feature :


This user would like the option to see all available data from providers like FXCM for forex, including simulated / hybrid data, as was available in NT7, rather than seeing the lot size as the volume


I will follow up with more information as soon as it's available. If the feature requests already exists, a vote will be added to it.


Please let us know if there are any other ways we can help.

[Segwin]

Hello Segwin,


I have submitted a feature request to the product management team for the following feature :


This user would like the option to see all available data from providers like FXCM for forex, including simulated / hybrid data, as was available in NT7, rather than seeing the lot size as the volume


I will follow up with more information as soon as it's available. If the feature requests already exists, a vote will be added to it.


Please let us know if there are any other ways we can help.

Thank you, thank you thank you.

I'd love to go to NT8 but won't until the T&S is functional again.

[CriticalTrader]

Just to clarify... when we see market data volume for Forex as 100K, this represents a real time trade of 1 100K lot at the indicated price and time?

[Segwin]

Just to clarify... when we see market data volume for Forex as 100K, this represents a real time trade of 1 100K lot at the indicated price and time?

No it doesn't. Since you can't tell true volume in Forex NT programmers just set it to show 100K.

My problem is however I could at least see some quantity thru FXCM and I could set alarms for block size which actually worked well. Now all we see is bid-ask and if there is more of one printing than the other.

I hope they return it to the way NT7 had it.

[CriticalTrader]

New to Forex, I'm still confused. Maybe you can help me out. Even if the "volume" observed in the market data stream is not accurate, the time and last price must be in some sense a reflection of the real time activity (i.e., each is a trade)? What is the Minute volume I'm looking at in the Historical Data Manager for forex? How is this different than the Tick volume? I have checked this, but wouldn't the sum of theTick volume occurring for prices that span a 1 minute price bar be equal to that bar's Minute volume?

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Hello CriticalTrader, and thank you for your question.

As you may be aware, Forex markets are a little different from other markets because they are decentralized. This means that there is no central place where volume data is located. Some data feed providers attempt to track this data and provide a number to end users, and FXCM is one such provider. All data feed providers have a bank they use for trades and functions such as leveraging, and this bank provides data on e.g. bid / ask prices to the data feed provider. This information, unless otherwise specified by your data feed provider, is probably the data they are giving to Ninja. Trades are just one piece of information banks can use to determine the prices they are willing to buy (bid) and sell (ask) at. Interest rates are an example of another important piece of information they use.

I am including some publicly available reference material for more information. Please let us know if there is any other way we can help.

https://www.fxcm.com/markets/forex-basics/how-to-read-a-chart/

https://www.ninjatraderbrokerage.com/forex_trading_education/forex

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bid-and-asked.asp

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Wanted to provide update that based on feedback we will be reverting to the NT7 style of volume reporting. Technically the volume reported in NT7 is the number of offer updates on the FXCM servers. Since it isn't actually volume and there is no data point for actual traded volume with NT8 we looked to set it to hard coded 100K which would be consistent with other FX providers. However per feedback we will revert to displaying # of offer updates as we did in NT7 since there is some inherent value in that still.

Our next beta release is coming along and will be out soon.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Segwin]

Woot!

Thank you NT, you really do listen.

I'm from Cleveland, Ohio so the Cavs winning and NT helping - it just doesn't get any better.

(not to look a gift horse in the mouth but I still have a few irons in the fire ).

[CriticalTrader]

What do you mean by "offer updates"?

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Offer updates in this context is the number of times the bid or ask on offer by FXCM has changed.

[CriticalTrader]

New to Forex, I'm still confused. Maybe you can help me out. Even if the "volume" observed in the market data stream is not accurate, the time and last price must be in some sense a reflection of the real time activity (i.e., each is a trade)? What is the Minute volume I'm looking at in the Historical Data Manager for forex? How is this different than the Tick volume? I have checked this, but wouldn't the sum of theTick volume occurring for prices that span a 1 minute price bar be equal to that bar's Minute volume?

Well, I've read a lot of stuff and as I stated in my question above, I am still unclear as to what I'm actually looking at in the Historical Data Manager, for both the Minute and Tick data from Kinetick/NT servers. Does each tick (price/time)-tuple simply represent a single transaction (a trade) as it is in non-Forex markets? Does the "volume" attached to the historical minute (price-time)-tuple represent a number of trades (lots or actual total volume)? What do the volume values represent?

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Hello CriticalTrader, and thank you for your most recent question.

Generally each tick represents a change in prices offered by the bank used by your exchange.

Provided volume values vary between data feed providers, but as a whole generally do not actually reflect trade volume. They are metrics provided as a convenience to those used to trading e.g. futures contracts so that they will be able to apply their own trading styles to forex trading.

Please let us know if there is any other way we can help.