Butterfly/Iron Condor/etc Options Trading and Backtesting

[theTed]

Hey gang, I'm a newb with NT coming from QuantConnect.com. I really like QuantConnect's platform for backtesting and automated trading, but I can't do trades (or backtests) against the RUT or the SPX with them, they don't support indexes. <grump>

I am just starting to try and play with NinjaTrader. eing a software engineer for 25 years I really appreciate platforms where I can see/write the code for what my strategies/backtests are doing. So, I'm excited about trying this out.

However, before I spend a lot of time investing in learning NT I wanted to double-check that the platorm can meet my requirements. Can I use NinjaTrader to backtest complex option trades like Butterflies, Iron Condors and the like? I don't want to have to enter the market for each contract for a Butterfly or Condor individually. I need to be able to enter the position as I do on ThinkOrSwim and have the whole position as a single limit price order.

Can I use it to backtest some of my strategies (finding entries for butterflies, making adjustements based on delta and theta, etc) on NT treating a series of mulitiple contracts as "one butterfly" or "one iron condor" position and have the greeks available for the position as a whole and make adjustments to the position as a whole?

And, if so, great!!!! I'm presuming then that it'd be easy enough to turn into a live automated trading strategy?

Thanks,
theTed

[NinjaTrader_JoshG]

Hello theTed,
Thanks for your post and welcome to the NinjaTrader forum.

You can use NinjaScript to turn just about any trading idea into an automated strategy.

NinjaScript is based on C#. We do have a fully documented help guide which will help you get started with NinjaScript. You will find language references to all of the methods and functions you will be using and a link to that Help Guide can be found below:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/en-us/ninjascript.htm

Alphabetical Reference: https://ninjatrader.com/support/help..._reference.htm

I suggest writing down your pseudocode first and if any questions come up about how to turn that into NinjaScript our support team can assist with more links and resources. This forum also has great resources in relation to Strategy Development. There is a very active developer community here that supplements the responses that NinjaTrader support is able to provide.

Let me know if you have any other questions come up.