Yellow strategy name

[mtthwbrnd]

Hello,

in paper trading, I have a strategy whose name is coloured yellow in the control panel -> strategies tab. I am testing out using Limit Orders, so I am sure that I am doing something bad!

But no error gets output to the Log tab though. Is there a way to find out what is causing the problem? (if yellow means there is one?).

Thanks,
Matthew.

[mtthwbrnd]

Oh, it just turned green after I pressed send. Is there some documentation about what the coulouring means?

Thanks,
Matthew.

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Matthew, this would mean it's waiting to be flat to do a live executed trade, green is it's running and trading live.

[mtthwbrnd]

Oh dear... I just spent all afternoon starting and stopping strategies trying to figure out how to make it go green, but all I had to do was wait :-). ha ha, patience always pays!

Cheers,
Matthew.

[mtthwbrnd]

I'm not sure how it can be waiting to go flat, because it is flat.

Control Panels -> Strategies -> Position Column = "-"

see attached, the strategy names are yellow but the positions are flat.

+ I have reset the sim101 account, selected flatten eveything, and disconnected/reconnected to barchart.com before adding the new strategies.

Thanks,
Matthew.

[mtthwbrnd]

In the log tab when a strategy is started is the following:

On starting a real-time strategy -
StrategySync=WaitUntilFlat
SyncAccountPosition=True
EntryHandling=AllEntries
EntriesPerDirection=99999999
StopTargetHandling=PerEntryExecution
ErrorHandling=StopStrategyCancelOrdersClosePositio ns
ExitOnClose=False
Set order quantity by=Strategy
ConnectionLossHandling=KeepRunning
DisconnectDelaySeconds=10
CancelEntryOrdersOnDisable=False
CancelExitOrdersOnDisable=True
MaxRestarts=4 in 5 minutes

Is there a way to set "StrategySync=WaitUntilFlat" to something else which presumably won't sit around for ages and ages "waiting until flat"? It is just so frustrating sitting here waiting for the yellow to turn green when I know, and can see, that the positons are flat.

Thanks,
Matthew.

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Matthew, you can set to 'Immediately Submit' and then ensure strategy vs account position synching -

http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/strategies_tab.htm

[mtthwbrnd]

Thanks, I forgot about that dialogue. But unfortunately selecting that option creates more headaches.

I don't understand why it is so complicated. Why can't we just have a flag that says: "Always keep the account position equal to the strategy position"?

At the moment I have two options:

i) Wait for *ages* and *ages* (I mean, hours) for the label to turn green
ii) Have it trading immediately, but the account position will not be the same as the strategy positon.

i is incredibly frustrating and undesirable, ii is just plain wrong. I don't know why anybody would ever want their account position to be different to their strategy position, unless their strategy was broken. Are there any explanations of why anybody want the two to be different?

I know that someone will suggest to go with ii and do a balancing manual trade, but that is not really a solution because we are building an auto trader - not a manual trader.

I just don't understand why it is so difficult to make the account position track the strategy position. The situation is not helped by the fact that there is no function to ask "what is the account position?" so that I can program an ad-hoc trade to make the account position equal the strategy position.

Reading through the forums, this issue appears to be a considerable head ache for many users.

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Matthew, sorry for the frustrations getting this to work - NT7 does have an autoSync option which would issue a synching market order at strategy startup if you are in immediately submit mode (otherwise not needed).

You can also just hardcode it in your Strategy Initialize() - SyncAccountPosition = true;

[birdog]

Yellow to Green

Does anyone have an easy way to force the virtual or simulated strategy trades that make the strategy turn yellow to virtually be closed or go flat so that it will then immediately go green?

NT, is there any way you can add the ability to right click on the individual strategy in the strategies tab AND/OR right click on the page itself in the strategies tab to then have an option to simply manually force close and approve any virtual/simulated trades which would allow the strategy to immediately turn green (this could be set individually or all as a group)?

In the meantime, does anyone have an answer to this right now?

Thanks everyone...

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Welcome to our forums and thanks for the suggestion, we'll add this to our list and track it under # 985 - the only way right now would be using the historical property to only call the OnBarUpdate() on realtime bars, this way there's no historical position to be dealt with as there are no historical OnBarUpdates processed. Or you would start up in WaitUntilFlat and then execute the next valid live signal.