Man, and Machine, or better Robot and Manual trading mix...

[tullips]

Not sure where to put this, but the question is: Can I have a robot creating trades that are separated from any manual trades?

For example: My ROBOT goes 2 LONG MES, and the trader sees a chance to get a nice trade for an additional three, and when it is at the TRADERS target, it closes, but the ROBOT his two LONG MES are still there and not mixed up with the additional three?

Or in other words, can I LOCK the ROBOT his trade, without being influenced by the manual trade?

(I hope I was clear enough, I am decent in programming, but bad at explaining)

[bltdavid]

Please don't cross post your question in multiple forums.
[The people who are most inclined to answer questions
monitor new questions in most of the forums anyways.]

-=o=-

Sure.

But there are subtle parts of the answer to the question you're
really asking.

What you're really asking is: Can I do all this in the same account?

Ah ... now that's the important part you left out.

If you want absolute total separation between your automated trades
and your manual trades, you must use two separate accounts . This
is the only way to get total absolute peace of mind that trades never
interfere with each other. (Well, almost, see the bottom)

If your robot is 'LONG 2' in MES, and you decided to go 'SHORT 3'
in MES manually, the true position at the broker is 'SHORT 1'. All
your broker sees is the buy/sell orders, so a 'BUY 2' followed by a
'SELL 3' for the same instrument in the same account means that
the account is now 'SHORT 1' for that instrument. This a major
conflict that can quickly wreck havoc on your account balance.

You'll want to read up on something called 'strategy position' as
well as the 'account position' and how you should strive to keep
these two in sync.

Sometimes, this out of syncness is less of any issue, such as
when your robot is LONG and you enter a manual LONG trade
(aka, enter same direction). But the FIFO nature of trade
matching means you may be asking for trouble later when
analyzing trade performance

So, can you separate auto vs manual?
Yes, you can.

If you use the same account, the separation is poor, and is
a matter of degree based upon the specifics of each over
lapping trade situation.

If you use two separate accounts, the separation is near
absolute.

I say 'near' because 'true' absolute is only achieved if the
trading happens in two separate accounts on two separate
machines. For ex, last I knew, the Close button in Chart
Trader can affect automated trades, even though you think
it's only for your manual trades. (Look up left clicking vs
middle clicking the Close button)

Moral of the story:
Best practice is to use two separate accounts for auto vs
manual trading.

[NinjaTrader_BrandonH]

Hello tullips,

Thanks for your post.

bltdavid it correct. To have your manual trades separate from your automated strategy trades, you would have to use two separate accounts. One to place your manual trades on and one to run your strategy on.

Manually submitting orders on the same account/instrument combination that a strategy is running on will cause trades to interfere with each other.

bltdavid provided a great example of this. "If your robot is 'LONG 2' in MES, and you decided to go 'SHORT 3' in MES manually, the true position at the broker is 'SHORT 1'. All your broker sees is the buy/sell orders, so a 'BUY 2' followed by a 'SELL 3' for the same instrument in the same account means that the account is now 'SHORT 1' for that instrument."

See the help guide page below for more information about Strategy Position vs Account Position.

Strategy vs. Account Position — https://ninjatrader.com/support/help..._account_p.htm

And, see this forum thread: https://forum.ninjatrader.com/forum/...tures-contract

[tullips]

I am using an indicator to place my trades; it has some restrictions compared to the 'strategy' functions that are available. But I was reading about having multiple strategies, going in the same direction, (yes, I am aware about the long/short, this I would avoid) and I was thinking by 'naming' the orders that it would be able to do so.

like: Buy("myOrder1")
manual trading
Sell("myOrder1")

But you are right, having double accounts does resolve the issue best.

[QuantKey_Bruce]

The order names only exist within the running strategy instance. Two strategies can even use the same order names - that's neither better nor worse than not using the same order names - the key problem is that if they're running on the same instrument and the same account, because each only sees its own orders yet sees the actual position in the account it is live trading, each has the potential to be out of sync and taken offline. Understand that once the order makes its way to the account and out of the abstraction layer of an individual strategy instance, there is no such thing as an order name - it just has a timestamp, a type e.g. buy market or sell limit etc., a time in force, and the limit or stop prices. There are a few other attributes for technicalities, but there's no name once it makes its way outside of the strategy. The broker interface has to deal in the realities the broker itself achnowledges, which are larely driven by what the exchange acknowledges. Naming orders is not one of those things - if you queried all of the orders at the CME, you would not see "myOrder1" under any circumstance.