nt's pricing structure keeps getting more awful. if that was even possible.

[rtwave]

people with nt,



just as i wrote in the title.


for decades financial entities have been competing to reduce obstacles to entry and overall costs for retail traders.


most trading platforms that i know of are available free of charge, data is free with most brokers and for a number of years there have been some brokers who won't even charge commissions or fees.


nt will go against this entire movement and will charge for the use of its platform, will charge for data and also will charge relatively elevated commissions and fees.


not only that, i just realized yesterday that nt has actually significantly increased most of these costs.



that's just awful, in the time since i began to learn to code on nt i haven't noticed any significant improvement on the platform since version 8 was released, particularly the backtesting - optimization engine which needs so many improvements.


i have some strategies that are almost ready for trading automated with real funds and i will have to think long and hard if i want to accept the awful conditions that nt now demands. i decided to open an account and trade with nt brokerage since the beginning primarily so that nt would eventually just stop charging for the use of the platform. it seems like i have been badly mistaken.



this is just an awful situation all in all.

[NinjaTrader_Zachary]

Hello rtwave,

Thank you for your post and feedback.

Reading through your post, I'm sorry to hear that you are feeling this way. I do want to address some of your points and clarify some information for you. First and foremost, NinjaTrader Brokerage account holders can indeed use our platform for free for live trading. In fact, we actually offer more features at the free Account Plan level now than we had in the past. While the free Account Plan does have a higher commission structure than our Monthly or Lifetime Plans, it is the exact same commission structure that we've always offered to people that had free license keys in the past. It is only if users want access to add-on features (Order Flow+, Multi Broker access), or lower commissions that they would be have to pay anything.

Although we've gone through cosmetic and organizational changes recently, the pricing for most things has remained roughly the same as it had been previously and we've actually tried to expand access to platform features to a greater number of users. With that said, if there is the perception that the cost of something has risen substantially, I would like to be able to look into and address that. Can you please specify which costs you are referring to when you mention significant increases?

Additionally, if you have suggestions about the optimization engine and backtesting, you are feel to send us an email of that specific suggestion so that we can relay that to our developers. We always open to suggestions. Feature requests for specific improvements can be sent to us via email at support(at)ninjatrader(dot)com or posted in their own thread in the Feedback and Suggestions section of the forum.

[rtwave]

i think the post i wrote is quite clear and straightforward. the only thing that could use some clarification is that i'm always referring to using the nt platform to develop, test and trade automated strategies.

the cost of leasing the nt platform used to be around $200 usd per trimester. the latest pricing information i read now states that the monthly cost is $99 usd, so that is $300 usd per trimester, which is an increase of 50%, and for no good reason as far as i'm concerned.


from november 2022 through february of 2023 i was trading very actively by hand and even when trading the smallest cme contracts i generated around $1,000 usd in commissions and fees for nt. if i had been able to trade automated strategies i would still be generating that kind of income for nt with regularity. and i would imagine many more traders would do similarly. nt could make more money than it used to make not by increasing prices but by waiving the cost of its platform to traders who trade through the nt brokerage.



regarding the situations with the backtesting - optimization engine, i have written tens of posts to these fora and i have also emailed extensively with developers at nt. if anyone goes through my profile on these fora they will immediately find multiple posts where i have documented conditions that will cause this engine to malfunction and even sample strategies and instructions to replicate these failures. and none of this has ever made any difference as far as i can tell.


i will post an extensive email message that i wrote years ago to nt executives and developers, just to prove that i have reported these problems with the platform to nt very descriptively from the very moment i started running into them.

[rtwave]

sample strategy to share.






mr. director at nt,




good day. i hope everyone at nt is doing good.




i have a strategy for nt that i want to share with you.





this strategy has a general structure very similar to some of the best strategies i have been able to develop. i have shared it multiple times with the people with nt support and also on the nt fora.



the objective of sharing this strategy with you is for you to try and find the most profitable conditions to trade it. that is, to discern the most profitable symbols to trade it on: the best bar types to use, bar sizes, slippage values, everything. in order to be able to obtain this information, you will need to run a lot of backtest and optimization processes on nt. and that should be a really valuable experience for you and others at nt. this strategy can be nicely profitable if one adds stop loss orders for all entries and can find appropriate values for all parameters. i would recommend that you start your tests with at least 24 months of 5 minute bars, this to keep risk under control, and then from there try other bar sizes and types.


now, over the time i have been programming on nt, i have made numerous reports to nt support because i keep running into the platform's and optimization engine's limits repeatedly. it happens frequently that i get crashes and incomplete results (i have multiple posts as rtwave on the nt fora where i have included numerous screengrabs and descriptions of how these crashes can be replicated). now, please, i don't have any interest in reporting these malfunctions to the people with nt support again. some months ago i put time and effort into writing several emails and posts to document and explain the issues i kept running into and how to replicate them. the people with nt support are always very polite but invariably there would be a point in these exchanges where their posture would be something like, - yes, ok, you have found a combination of factors that will cause crashes - malfunctions but the platform cannot be blamed unless it is the sample strategy that is crashing and working on very little data -. optimization processes will crash with this strategy that i include as an attachment, if one does things as simple as use slippage values higher than 20 ticks or if one enables the exit on session close setting. there's no way this could be considered normal or acceptable performance from the nt platform, and i consider this should be investigated and fixed.



the second benefit that will result from running tens and tens of optimizations on this strategy is that it will give any executives at nt who choose to do this a direct, personal experience of what it is like to work with the nt platform.


and one of the most important reasons that i decided to write this email is to share with the executives at nt how it is to work on another platform that i used for years: name of other platform.


i do not recommend that other platform to anyone and i have taken the time to share my experience and the serious failures of that platform on public trading fora. that other platform cost me too much wasted time and also money with its garbage backtesting - optimization engine results (their backtesting results on non minute bar types are pure fantasy, their trailing stop orders do not work either, and there are other major flaws with that platform). incredibly, i still find their optimization engine to be much more robust and easier to operate than nt's (still it is not reliable or accurate when nt's always generates reliable and credible results). i will explain further; on that other platform one can create 1 chart with any one symbol, insert 1 strategy and then set the values for slippage and commissions. one can then set ranges for the values that the parameters of the strategy will be optimized over and disable the strategy. one can then add as many strategies as one wants to that 1 chart and do the same thing in setting ranges to be optimized over and disabling them all. if one then enables any one of those strategies, the optimization engine will start running and when it finishes, the strategy with the resulting optimal parameters will be applied to that 1 chart which can then be saved. this means that one can optimize a strategy and the process is over that chart will be ready for the strategy to be automated and traded on simulator or with real funds. and it is also possible to just copy and paste this chart with disabled strategies to create identical copies to run this optimization over, or copies for different symbols, or different bar types, or bar sizes, slippage values, anything. so one can copy and paste 1 same chart template in this way 30 or more times over several window files, make any modifications one wants to and then just enable the 1 strategy in each chart that one wants to optimize and that other platform will run all 30 optimization processes one after another, and when it has finished one just has to save the window files containing the charts and everything will be saved. nt's strategy analyzer works very differently and this is something that you will be able to corroborate for yourself. all that other platform's optimizations run over 10,000 iterations by default and i recurrently have found that strategies that i could evaluate on that other platform without problem, inexplicably are too much for nt to process. at the moment i have been limited to running 400, 800, 1,000 iterations on nt because crashes and incomplete, nonsensical results will be too common if i try to use much larger numbers.


another important functionality in which nt falls short is working with out of sample data. anyone who knows how to develop profitable strategies knows that if one has 20 months of historical data, one has to use only the first 15 months for all refinements, backtests and optimizations (it is ideal to leave 20 to 40% of the data out of sample). the last 5 months should be kept out of sample and when one adds them to the strategy, this will tell us how the strategy would have performed in real time over that out of sample data it has never been optimized for. i invite you all to try and work in this manner with the nt platform. and it is precisely these evaluations on out of sample data that will confirm if the parameters you have chosen for this strategy i send as an attachment (bar type, bar size, strategy parameters, and so on) will generate profits when trading live on real time data.



i have several strategies on nt that i have been preparing over a number of weeks to trade with real funds but i still can't say that i'm ready (i have not been able to get some stop loss orders to work as intended either, at the moment i'm trying to hire a freelance programmer). i share this sample strategy because having the executives at nt go through this same process should give you invaluable firsthand experience and perspective of what is really like to work with the nt platform.



very well, thanks, regards,

[NinjaTrader_Zachary]

Hello rtwave,

Thank you for the clarification.

Just to be clear, the Monthly Account Plan and the Lease License that we previously offered are not one in the same. We made a decision to remove a barrier to entry to some of our vital features, and it is not a requirement to pay for the Monthly Account Plan to use NinjaTrader for strategy development and automated trading. This functionality is now available at the Free Account Plan level, alongside every other feature that was previously included with the Trader+ suite of features (Chart Trader, ATM Strategies, OCO orders, etc.). Previously, these features were only accessible with a Lease or Lifetime License key but that is no longer the case after the recent changes to the structure were made. The only reason that you would need to pay for the Monthly Account Plan is if you wanted to have your account set to that commission level.

Please let us know if we may assist you any further.

[rtwave]

people with nt,



in the interest of clarity and transparency:



_ nt's lifetime license had a price of approximately $1,000 usd for a number of years. it now costs approximately $1,500 usd. 50% increase in cost there.



_ the price for nt's lease plan for one trimester used to be approximately $200 usd. nt's current monthly plan is now approximately $100 usd per month, or $300 per trimester. 50% increase in cost there as well.


i have looked for any plan that will let nt users trade strategies automated at a price similar to the one i mentioned previously but i haven't found any other alternatives. ¿does nt make any kind of lease plan available to clients for something like $200 usd per trimester? i looked everywhere on nt's website but couldn't find anything other than the two options i listed above.



very well, thanks, regards,



marcos

[NinjaTrader_Zachary]

Hello Marcos,

Thank you for your response.

Unless you are wanting lower commissions on your account, you do not have to pay for automated trading at all. It is a part of the base-level, free Account Plan. The only benefit of the Monthly Account Plan is lower commissions.

[rtwave]

Hello Marcos,

Thank you for your response.

Unless you are wanting lower commissions on your account, you do not have to pay for automated trading at all. It is a part of the base-level, free Account Plan. The only benefit of the Monthly Account Plan is lower commissions.

NinjaTrader_Zachary,




thanks.



i read the information you have shared and those are really good news. the best news from nt in as long as i can remember.



now, if only nt could ever decide to fix the backtesting - optimization engine that would be amazing.



very well, thanks, regards.