Sim101 - dollars or cents

[James Beale]

Hello

Is the Sim101 account balance expressed in dollars or cents?

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello James Beale,

Thank you for your post.

The values will be in dollars and cents. So the value would be DOLLAR.cents or $$$.˘˘.

[James Beale]

Thanks for the reply.

So in the attached screen shot, I started with a Sim101 balance of $5000, am now showing a "Realized PnL" of -30.75, no trades pending or running, and yet the cash value seems to be only 1400.00.

The Simulator tab in Options shows:
Margin/Unit = 1000 (although I understand is overridden by the instrument manager setting of 9)
Maintenance margin = 0.30
Margin = 0.50
Initial cash = 5000.

So I'm confused. Why would the Sim101 Cash Value column have gone down to a mere 1400.00?

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello James Beale,

Thank you for your response.

Was the only profit made negative? Or did you have other trades with profit? Do you have commissions applied to your PnL calculations (Tools > Options > General)?

[James Beale]

No profit, all losses (all profits negative).
No commissions applied in Options.

I've also noticed - and this may be linked - that the "Initial Margin" column in the "Accounts" tab during trading shows 1000, and not 9 when an order is placed. Then after the trade, 1000 is also deleted from the "Cash Value" column in the Sim101 account.

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello James Beale,

Thank you for your response.

Please follow the instructions below to repair the NinjaTrader database.

• Disconnect NinjaTrader from any open connections via File > Disconnect
• From the NinjaTrader Control Center window select the menu Tools > Options
• Select the "Data" tab
• Press the "Repair DB" button
• Press the "OK" button

[James Beale]

OK. I've done all that, and am running another test on Sim101.

However, it seems there is still an issue. I started with a balance of 500,000. I'm showing a loss of 1385.09 (negative profit), and yet the Sim101 cash value column only shows 394,500.

The attached spreadsheet shows the trades taken so far today.

It looks like I'm losing the Initial Deposit each time. Shouldn't this be largely repaid? Shouldn't the figure in the cash value column only reflect the loss made when the strategy's stop loss is hit?

In addition, the Initial Deposit appears to be 1000, and yet the Instrument Manager setting for the symbol is set to a margin of 9. I thought that the Instrument Manager settings overrode the Options / Simulator tab set-up.

[James Beale]

As an update to my earlier post, I decided to run a test on a totally different NinjaTrader installation on a different machine.

From the screen shot, you can see that one trade was placed. It was closed by stop loss for -10.10 (negative profit).

The Control Centre / Options / Simulator settings may be seen in the second screen shot attached.

It seems to me that the Cash Value column should be showing 4989.90, and not 3800.00.

Am I wrong? If so, where did the 1189.90 go?

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello James,

Thank you for your response.

The CFDs profit and margin are going to be factored differently. I will look into this further on my end.

In general, with currency pairs you would need to be receiving the USD pairs in real-time as well to convert the profit. So if I was trading EURGBP, I would need to have the EURUSD and GBPUSD on charts or in a Market Analyzer viewing the real-time data in order to appropriately convert the profit. This is likely the case with the foreign CFD, however as this is a new instrument type in the NinjaTrader platform it may be calculated differently.

I look forward to assisting you further.

[James Beale]

Many thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I'm struggling to understand it.

In my perhaps rather simplistic world, my bank account should go up or down by the amount gained or lost.

The Sim101 account isn't doing this. Why?

[NinjaTrader_Brandon]

Hello James,

Thanks for your reply.

That is correct, it should function as so. If you test trade USOIL for example this properly works. I have submitted this to development to look into.

[James Beale]

It seems that the live trading is wrong in this respect too. See this trade:

Control Centre / Account Performance / Trades says:
$FRA40 - loss of 17,065.95

Statement from broker (FXCM) says:
FRA40 - loss of 10,918.33.

I confess to losing faith in NinjaTrader!

[NinjaTrader_Brandon]

Hello James,

Thanks for your reply.

I have tested and verified that the $FRA40_CFDEUR properly calculates in NinjaTrader.
From your Account Performance tab, do you currently have "Group trades by ATM Strategy" checked or unchecked? Do these results change if you toggle this option and regenerate your report?
Did you carry any positions overnight for this instrument?

[James Beale]

The "Group trades by ATM Strategy" was unchecked. I checked it, and regenerated, but that made no difference to the result. NinjaTrader still shows -17,065.95.

There was an overnight charge of 68.96 on this trade.

Therefore the discrepancy between what NinjaTrader and the broker's statement show is still 6000. How can that possibly be?

[NinjaTrader_Brandon]

Hello James,

Thanks for your reply.

SO you did hold the position overnight?
If so you will need to set your From date to go back as far as the last time you were flat at the start of the day for the report to properly generate. Otherwise the opens and closes will be calculated incorrectly.