Suggestion: NT / Mirus / Zen, how about a proper apology for the debacle that is R18?

[bce111]

Big mikes forums has alot more information than here and what git us to this point. ... I've seen posts from middle of month discussing everything that was going down. I'm all caught up.

I'm checking out. Long day. But do you have a link to the info on Big Mikes? Thanks, sledge.

[bce111]

Thanks sledge, but I don't go there. For one, every time I click a link on that forum I get asked to pay money for membership! For another, I don't have the time for trading forums.

Anyway, it's not up to users to frequent every trading forum out there on the off chance that one of them will have the latest info on NT. It's NT's job to keep us posted of big changes like this. If they knew about it months ago then that's even more despicable that users weren't informed of the pending upheaval.

Good points.

[Instamess]

Yes, we had approved R18 release and it had undergone standard testing we apply to all of our releases. If it had not passed, we would not have released it.

Assuming then that your "standard testing" is not hopelessly inadequate it would seem you put the blame - for the faulty bits of the update - squarely in ZenFire's court. At least that's one thing cleared up - Mirus/ZenFire are to blame for foisting crap code on us guinea pigs, not NinjaTrader.

I fear your company will still shoulder some of the fall out from this disgraceful episode though given your close association with Mirus. But at least you've belatedly engaged and attempted to help with information after I started this thread. Perhaps it was you twisting some arms at Mirus that prompted them to put out the statement they finally did. I thank you for your efforts and updates.

Any ETA to a fully working and reliable NT, one that we can use for, like, taking trades?

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

I have posted the latest update here - http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/f...468#post356468

[koganam]

Instamess,
Unless I am mistaken, NinjaTrader and ZenFire are both parts of the same organization. They seem to have separate identities and support teams but I believe they are owned and controlled by the same people, and that is NinjaTrader. If I am wrong anyone, please correct me. Hence a post from Ray is a post from ZenFire, whether they admit to it or not.

Given the culture and attitude as reflected by their employees who are public facing, I find it hard to believe the NinjaTrader and ZenFire are the same organization. If ZenFire were owned by NinjaTrader, you would have had much better communication and reactive support that what you have had from Mirus, who I believe are the real owners of ZenFire.

I am so glad that Mirus tried to make me jump through so many hoops when I tried to open an account, that I went elsewhere and opened accounts at 3 other brokerages.

I suggest that any brokerage that treats you the way that these folks have do not deserve to keep your business.

[bce111]

Given the culture and attitude as reflected by their employees who are public facing, I find it hard to believe the NinjaTrader and ZenFire are the same organization. If ZenFire were owned by NinjaTrader, you would have had much better communication and reactive support that what you have had from Mirus, who I believe are the real owners of ZenFire.

I am so glad that Mirus tried to make me jump through so many hoops when I tried to open an account, that I went elsewhere and opened accounts at 3 other brokerages.

I suggest that any brokerage that treats you the way that these folks have do not deserve to keep your business.

Pat Shaughnessy http://www.marketswiki.com/mwiki/Pat_Shaughnessy, the CEO of ZenFire, and Eliot Wickersheimer, the CEO of Mirus Futures, http://www.marketswiki.com/mwiki/Eliot_Wickersheimer created Mirus Futures and ZenFire together http://www.marketswiki.com/mwiki/Mirus_Futures.

I do want to thank Matthew, especially, and most of the NinjaTrader support staff on these forums who did show a level of caring, commitment, and made a sincere effort to help. You know, I was happy with Mirus' service until this episode. I referred a lot of other traders to them. I was very active on the EliteTrader website in particular. But the way this has been handled is obviously a big turn off for me.

[Instamess]

Got an apology email from Mirus a few minutes ago.

Still no acceptance of how they've screwed up the handling of the problem and for not keeping us in the loop. And they still don't want to talk to us so no reply email was provided.

The email does include the usual Public Relations spin - "ZenFire has been working diligently to reestablish stable connectivity for all NinjaTrader users, and we are acutely aware of the critical impact these interruptions have on our traders. Many of those we have spoken with have been extremely understanding of these technical issues, however we also understand your disappointment in the service disruption..."

Traders they've spoken with? Not here they haven't. It must be the ones who phoned in (and got through). It's a coincidence that the understanding customers got through on the phone and the annoyed customers got the answerphone.

[Edit: to correct grammar]]

[TAJTrades]

I may be off base here but I think this is a Zenfire issue and NOT NinjaTrader.

I have had 100% up time using AMP / CQG data feed while the Zenfire debacle has been unfolding. The folks at Ninja may not be able to say it but I will.

Crapcan (to keep it polite) Zenfire and switch over to CQG and problem solved. You will be trading Monday morning. If Mirrus only offers Zenfire feed then Crapcan Mirrus and switch to AMP.

There, problem solved.

[laocoon]

Crapcan (to keep it polite) Zenfire and switch over to CQG and problem solved. You will be trading Monday morning. If Mirrus only offers Zenfire feed then Crapcan Mirrus and switch to AMP.

I guess many traders will be doing exactly that if Zen Fire isn't running perfectly on Monday morning.

[Instamess]

I may be off base here but I think this is a Zenfire issue and NOT NinjaTrader.

I hear what you're saying, TAJTrades, and it makes logical sense that if the software is working fine with some data feeds the problem is likely to be elsewhere.

OTOH, maybe it was NT's responsibility to test it with the ZenFire datafeed before allowing Mirus to force all traders to switch to release 18. The decision to force us to R18 would have been a joint decision and without knowing what tests NT conducted with the ZF feed and what the results of the tests were we cannot categorically rule out that NT helped their good friends at Mirus by rushing out something that was not customer ready with the ZenFire feed. NT approved not just the software but the software + feed combo.

The folks at Ninja may not be able to say it ....

If there was no blame attributable to you but there existed the possibility of your company suffering reputational damage, wouldn't you clear any confusion and explain that it was completely out of your control and entirely a Mirus responsibility? NT is being very careful to not point the finger at Mirus and are protecting Mirus as much as they can from any publicity fallout. There's something that doesn't smell quite right there. Maybe the blame is only 90% to Mirus.

Anyway, we have no confirmation either way so we'll have to stay with our respective positions/suspicions. Ray could clear it up, of course, but I doubt he will as he hasn't done it so far.

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

It's real simple:

- NinjaTrader integrates an API provided by Zen-Fire
- We test this API against a standard suite of tests
- If anything fails, we identify if this is an issue in our code or the provided API and it gets resolved
- Only once they are resolved do we release
- Zen-Fire has been experiencing serious service disruptions
- They have publicly acknowledged this through emails issues by Mirus Futures
- The service outage is not in NinjaTrader's control
- NinjaTrader receives connection status information from the API and its simply passed through our software

[Instamess]

Thanks, Ray. So none of the current problems are attributable to the API? (In the absence of details from Mirus we don't really know where the problems are)

If the problem is entirely of Mirus's making, it's very good of NT to field the support questions and respond to irate customers like myself ... and for your engineers to be helping Mirus resolve these problems (problems which are outside the joint-responsibility area of the API code).

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Thanks, Ray. So none of the current problems are attributable to the API? (In the absence of details from Mirus we don't really know where the problems are)

If the problem is entirely of Mirus's making, it's very good of NT to field the support questions and respond to irate customers like myself ... and for your engineers to be helping Mirus resolve these problems (problems which are outside the joint-responsibility area of the API code).

The connection issues they are working to resolve has nothing to do with the Zen-Fire API or NinjaTrader.

[Instamess]

I retract all suggestions of NT's complicity in the current problems and you have my apology for suspecting you. I reiterate that I have always found NT's support to be first class and I've not been shy to state that in various locations since I first started using NT. I shall continue to do so.

Thanks for clearing this up.

[easytrader]

So, Ray.. is it the case that even if we switch over our datafeed to Kinetick, we still have to deal with the Zenfire API as it remains the order routing and order execution back-end API? If that is the case, then continued problems with Zenfire might necessitate moving to a broker that supports CQG, if I can safely assume that CQG is both datafeed and back-end API to NinjaTrader, at brokers who support it. Do you know if that is the case?