Suggestions for improvements to NinjaTrader related to Strategies

[gbourque]

NinjaTrader is an excellent piece of software. But it's not perfect. Here's an example.

1. If your strategy is enabled, you can still right-click it and select "Edit Strategy." But if you do, a message box pops up (with a cantankerous accompanying sound) telling you to disable the strategy before editing it. Wouldn't it be better and more friendly to disable "Edit Strategy" when the strategy is enabled?

2. Playback is a mess. It works, once you get it going, which is a pain. Let's say you have a month's worth of Market Replay data going back from the present. You connect to Playback Connection. The Playback dialog appears, inviting you to select the date range you want to operate under. The Start date usually defaults to ten days back from the latest date. But if you want to go back further, you must change the Start date. To do so, you select the Start time dialog and change the date.

This is where the problems begin. After you have moved back the Start date, you cannot right click and immediately select Go To, to select the date and time you want to go to, to get on with your testing. No. If you right-click, Go To is disabled and the chart goes back to "Loading. " Why does it need to do this? This happens several times, depending on how far back you moved the Start date. Eventually it gets its bearings, but why was this necessary in the first place?

Several iterations are required to move along. But in the time being, several minutes have gone by while you dealt with this broken software. Since iterative testing means dealing with this over and over, this situation is unacceptable.

I'm not interested in hearing that you can't reproduce this. Please just report it to software support. Thank you for your attention. I know you will get right on it and include it in the next update, which won't come a moment too soon.

Thanks again.

[NinjaTrader_Jesse]

Hello gbourque,

Just as a heads up, in the future please post suggestions to the suggestions and feedback sub forum.

1) Strategies are intentionally not editable from the strategy menu after enabled. The reason is that changing user inputs requires restarting the script, the same happens with indicators but those are not actively trading so no warning system is needed. The enabled checkbox prevents you from restarting the strategy on accident to avoid it incorrectly trading or leaving positions unprotected. Restarting a strategy is a much more complex process than restarting an indicator so an intentional checkbox is used to restart the strategy.

2) the playback controller will generally be the start of the session for the earliest date. If you are seeing some problem using the controller please try deleting your data and then re downloading it. If you continue to see a problem make a list of steps to see the issue and post that to the NinjaTrader desktop -> platform technical support sub forum.

After you move the playback controllers position in time you do have to give it time to process that change. You can't immediately do anything until its done processing. This is similar to a realtime chart, if you right click and select reload historical data you would have to wait for that process to finish before having the data.

[gbourque]

Thanks Jesse.

I realize strategies are not editable when enabled and should not be.

I'm just asking, Why doesn't NinjaTrader just disable Edit Strategy when the strategy is enabled? Why would it let the user select Edit Strategy when it knows the strategy is enabled and is just going to pop up a message and a sound? Just disable Enable Strategy. That's all the message I need.

I also realize I must give Market Replay time to process a date/time change. I just shouldn't have to do it more than once. That's my point. You must right-click three or four times before it settles down. Again, I'm not talking about moving the slider. I'm talking about right-click Go To.

I have already tried deleting the data and re-downloading it several times. The behavior I described is apparent and reproducible and not a user error.


Again, please pass on these issues to software support. I was a software developer. These are real issues.

Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_Jesse]

Hello gbourque,

Because you may want to edit the strategy properties before starting it or disable it or change its properties and then restart it.

Regarding playback, that is not like historical data which can be loaded once. Playback is live data so processing of that data takes a lot more time. Its a very large amount of data points and navigating to a specific time requires the playback engine to process both historical data and realtime data to end up where you want. Once you have processed the playback data you can play forward at a high speed and allow the platform to process the live data at that speed.

If you see a problem then you need to collect the specific steps used and post that to the platform technical support forum.

[gbourque]

It makes no sense to have Edit Strategy enabled when all it is going to to is tell you to disable the strategy to edit it. That's true from a usability standpoint.

It's obvious you are not really getting my points. Please just pass this along to software support. You are just making excuses and are not making my experience better.

[NinjaTrader_Jesse]

Hello gbourque,

Edit strategy allows you to disable an enabled instance or also enable a disabled instance. it also allows you to edit properties on strategies that are not currently enabled and enable them if you want to. It is made that way for a consistent user experience. You don't have to use the menu for enable/disable you can also use the checkbox in the strategies list to enable or disable a strategy as well.

From the suggestions that you provided I don't have anything which I can make a feature request for because the items you mentioned are how the platform is designed to work. A consistent user experience means having the same menu options for each item. For playback data loading that would be expected based on how that tool works so there is not really anything I could request for that either.

If you have a specific problem with playback usage you can collect the steps used to see the problem and post that in the platform technical support sub forum so we can report that to development.

[gbourque]

Please pass along my suggestion. That's all I ask.

[gbourque]

If you continue to be obtuse, I will pursue other ways to inform NinjaTrader of this problem

[gbourque]

The problem is that if you try to use Go To before moving the slider, it doesn't work. It's a bug. Please report it. Thank you, Jesse.

[jeronymite]

gbourque If I may restate the issue, as I think you mean it, even though I think I fully understand it.

Quite simply, whenever a Strategy is enabled and running, all mechanisms that are used to Edit the settings of that Strategy should be disabled, so that it is impossible to even try to edit it whilst it is running. Of course, when the Strategy is disabled and therefore eligible to be edited, those mechanisms should be enabled again. Very simple, very straightforward, prevents any ambiguity requiring error messages.

As for Playback ... yes, it has many issues and needs development attention. But that is not the way it seems to work, sadly.

Thanks.

[gbourque]

That's a good way of putting it. If the strategy is enabled, then all controls which would result in editing should be disabled. It seems the jarring message box was an afterthought.

[gbourque]

By the way, after some testing I've found is if, after you set the start date in Playback, the first thing you do is move the slider, it works better. If you try to use right-click Go To without moving the slider first, it doesn't work well. After moving the slider then Go To works fine.