Futures Trading with TD Ameritrade

[pbailey19]

I did find some answers on this question in the forum, but they were all at least two years old.

Right now, I'm using NinjaTrader with the Kinetick live feed, working on an ES trading strategy. Once I feel that the strategy is ready, I'd like to "turn the key" and take advantage of NinjaTrader's automated trading features.

However, my broker is TD Ameritrade; more specifically, I have a thinkOrSwim account (never sure if that's the same thing nowadays, or not.) Is it possible to have NinjaTrader send buy/sell ES futures orders automatically?

[NinjaTrader_Brandon]

Hello pbailey19,

Thanks for your post.

With TD Ameritrade / Think Or Swim you could only trade equities with NinjaTrader. To trade futures you would need to connect with another broker that supports futures with NinjaTrader.

Below I have provided a link to the Understanding the data provided by your connectivity provider section of our help guide.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/index.html?historical_data.htm

[pbailey19]

Thanks for the quick reply. I already knew that I wouldn't get historical tick data from TD Ameritrade; that's why I subscribed to Kinetick. I *suspected* that I wouldn't be able to auto-trade futures with TD Ameritrade, but wasn't sure. Thanks for confirming that.

One other bit of research I'm having some frustration with is, identifying which futures brokers *allow* auto-trading via NinjaTrader, and which futures brokers will actually *host* an auto-trade strategy on their servers. Is there such a list on the NinjaTrader website, or some kind of general FAQ for automated trading setup? (Note - I'm not talking about "how to code a strategy" - I'm talking about "things you need to take care of when you're taking a strategy *LIVE*")

[NinjaTrader_Brandon]

Hello pbailey19,

Thanks for your reply.

All NinjaScript automated strategies reside directly on your computer. you may use them with any broker. No broker has the ability to have the strategies running on their server however you may be interested in running NinjaTrader on a VPS.
Below I have provided a link to a partner who provides this service.

http://www.speedytradingservers.com/