Is it okay to leave Ninja running 24/5 during the week?

[Johnny]

Hello all,

Finally invested in a desktop / trading workstation. I wish I did this years ago as it's virtually dead silent and generates zero heat with my use.

Anyway, I plan on running this 24/5 during the weekdays in order to avoid the hazzle of booting and firing up my workspace every single day like I've done with my laptop.

Would there be any arguments against doing so? I.e., is there any benefit to re-starting Ninja once in a while during the week?

Thanks in advance.

[bltdavid]

I've had no issues leaving NT running for days at a time. I
usually reboot my trading machine on weekends -- but other
than that NT is almost always running.

Leave it running, you'll be fine.

Besides, if you're running the latest 8.1.x.x releases, you'll
need to enter your password every time you restart NT,
something you probably did all the time via your laptop.

-=o=-

I recommend you setup a completely blank workspace,
I call mine simply BLANK.

Whenever I exit NinjaTrader, I close all workspaces, clicking
'Yes' to save each workspace, unless I've been experimenting,
then I usually choose 'No'.

The point is, I always exit NinjaTrader whereby the only
workspace that is left open is the BLANK workspace.

Why?
Because startup times are extremely fast when NT only
has to open a single blank workspace.

After NT is up, then I connect to my main data provider.
[I would never recommend you allow your connections to
auto connect -- I always do this manually.]

My next habit is: I manually download all historical data
using Tools > Historical Data, and by starting up quickly
into the BLANK workspace, I can quickly begin this data
download. The download itself is usually quite fast.

After the download is complete, then I open my main
trading workspace.

-=o=-

So, for me, I only choose to restart NinjaTrader 'on the
the spur of the moment' when I notice some kind of
weird issue, such as a data issue.

However ...
I think my restart procedure (open into single BLANK w/s,
download all historical data) is already an antidote to most
bad data situations, so I don't often have to restart NT due
to weird data issues.

-=o=-

When I reboot on weekends, before I start NT back up,
I usually delete the cache folder inside the db directory,
NT will automatically recreate this folder as necessary.

Just my 2˘.

[flybuzz]

nope unless there's a problem or freeze. I think I even leave it up for 2 weeks before. Mostly I worry it might consume too much memory after a while or alerts started to be non-functional in certain cases so a restart is a good practice.

[jeronymite]

NinjaTrader Support would advise you to exit NinjaTrader 8 every day (or at least restart it, which is the same thing). IMHO, that is to avoid issues that can occur in the platform if it runs for a significant time, where "significant" in the sense NT Support thinks of it is more than 24 hours. Frankly, that seems to be preventive behaviour, designed to reduce the risk of platform issues happening as they become more probable the longer the platform runs. In other words, there is a recognition that the platform becomes "less robust" the longer it runs; which, in reality, amounts to silent acknowledgement of design/architecture/implementation issues that should not be there. The procedures that bltdavid follows are a good approach, and they also are based on a similar correct assumption, namely that one actually needs to "jump through hoops" to avoid potential issues happening the longer the platform is let run.

This boils down to a fundamental concern about the platform: for all the amazing and wonderful things it can do and the exemplary capabilities it offers for custom programming, it holds within itself substantial failings that are more likely to manifest the longer it runs. (Some of those failings manifest from the moment of running it and can be easily observed at any time.) For all the efforts of informed, technically capable and loyal customers to encourage NinjaTrader to make sensible, logical and cost-beneficial changes (changes that make plainly good business sense!), there seems to be a trenchant attitude within the organisation that "management always know best". One must understand this grievous limitation on one's "ask" of the organisation.

There is also an obvious implication of following the official advice to restart every day: depending on the type of orders one uses, one can only day trade at best if one wants certainty of platform behaviour and trade management. There are ways to work around that, but the strict basic principle they advise makes it problematic that there can always be certain continuity of trading if the platform is restarted. Essentially, the official advice makes it "not advisable" to trade beyond day trading if one uses any type of "synthetic" order. This has been discussed in some detail previously, and the official response is that restarting the platform means active trades may not be recoverable in the platform, notably when the relevant orders are synthetic.

Keep all this in mind as you consider how to manage your use of the platform.

Thanks.

[Leeroy_Jenkins]

In my experience, the longer I run the NT, the less responsive it becomes. I have a habit of always restarting it before RTH begin. I use NT8.0.X so it doesn't have log in issues

[backtester831]

Hello all,

Finally invested in a desktop / trading workstation. I wish I did this years ago as it's virtually dead silent and generates zero heat with my use.

Anyway, I plan on running this 24/5 during the weekdays in order to avoid the hazzle of booting and firing up my workspace every single day like I've done with my laptop.

Would there be any arguments against doing so? I.e., is there any benefit to re-starting Ninja once in a while during the week?

Thanks in advance.

I think it's going to depend on your computer and what you're doing. I've left NinjaTrader running on my vps from ninjamobiletrader for over 1 month and never had an issue with performance.

But I've seen other people in my trade groups that bought the highest end $4,000+ trading desktops from that EZ company Apex recommends and their NinjaTrader can barely make it a single day before freezing.

[bltdavid]

But I've seen other people in my trade groups that bought the highest end $4,000+ trading desktops from that EZ company Apex recommends and their NinjaTrader can barely make it a single day before freezing.

Do you use Apex Investing's toolkit?

Obviously, 3rd-party tools loaded onto your charts
can skew one's opinion of NT's uptime.

[backtester831]

Do you use Apex Investing's toolkit?

Obviously, 3rd-party tools loaded onto your charts
can skew one's opinion of NT's uptime.

Exactly! But what is NinjaTrader without the 3rd party tools?

[Johnny]

Thanks for all the good and informed comments, everyone!

I'll probably aim at the occasional reboot, then.

[NinjaTrader_Adrian]

Hello Johnny,.
Thank you for your post.

When it comes to leaving NinjaTrader open for multiple days, this can cause problems if your PC goes into sleep mode while NinjaTrader is running. We recommend disabling sleep mode if you plan on doing this. It's also a good idea to close and reopen the platform from time to time to prevent your log and trace files from becoming too large.


Please let us know if we may provide any further assistance.