Tick data from Gain

[Penelope]

First of all I'm very happy using Ninja Trader. But can you please explain something for me?

I use live data from Gain for studying and backtesting my trading strategy for tick trading Forex pairs.

I subscribe to a service which supplies an excellent trading strategy and I watch Forex trading videos from their website where the demonstrator uses Tradestation charts. He usually trades in 144 tick intervals.

To synchronize my Ninja Trader charts with the 144 tick Tradestation charts, I have to make very big adjustments to the number of ticks on my Ninja Trader charts.

For example: When I set my EURJPY Ninja Trader chart to 55 ticks, it is identical to the Tradestation EURJPY chart set at 144 ticks.

Another example: USDCAD Ninja Trader chart set to 40 ticks is identical to Tradestation's USDCAD set at 144 ticks.

I work on a further 5 Forex pairs and they all have to be set at much lower amounts (between 48 ticks and 64 ticks to tie in exactly with the Tradestation 144 tick charts.

Is it usual for data feeds to vary so much? If it is, then that's okay but if it is not normal, am I having a problem with my Gain data feed?

Penelope

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Hi Penelope,

The reason your charts are different are because FX last trade data is synthetic...It does not exist. FX is not traded on a centralized exchange and does not have time and sales data. Since GAIN does not provide this data, the last traded price (which drives ticks) is syntheticaly created by subsituting changes in the bid price for the last traded price. This is done by most vendors to drive analytic tools, such as our charting. The bid price that is tracked is the bid price from GAIN in this case. If you watched a feed from another FX FCM, you would get a completely different rate although they will track closely with other rates.

At the end of the day, you are comparing apples to oranges in comparing feeds.

[Penelope]

Hi Ray

Thank you for your very excellent explanation. I had a suspicion it would be something like that. It all boils down to trading virtual reality numbers in cyberspace. But I did just go check in the mirror to ensure I was actually here!

Penelope