Question Summary:
[quote]I’ve been with tech support and they say my CPU is too slow to cope with charts that have a lot of bars in 125 days of history, which can rule out a lot of forex.
So, until I get a faster computer, I need to stick with charts that don’t tax my ninjatrader too much. Support suggested YM as they said it won’t have as many bars in 125 days and it’s just $5 per tick, so it’s cheaper to learn with.
Which leads me to my next question. I have $1000 for my trading account and I need to decide whether to open a futures trading account or a nadex account.
Can you please help me choose the following:
- Which contracts to chart in ninjatrader
- What type of account I should open?[/quote]
Answer:
You only need to load 125 days if you have expected volume or expected range on your chart. If you’er trading futures, you would not need either of these for trend catcher. You could load 10 days.
I would do NQ over YM as many of our traders in the room are big fans of NQ.
However if you have only $1,000 that is not enough to really trade futures with. You need ideally a minimum of 3x max drawdown + margin.
You may be better off going with spot forex as you can better control the size. You can do 1,000 units of ie eur/usd for a value of .10 a pip or 10,000 units of currency for the value of $1.00 a pip or 30,000 units of currency for $3.00 a pip etc… etc… You can get an account with FXCM which plugs into NinjaTrader.
Straight up forex is simpler than learning all the binaries as it’s just buy or sell 1 thing. Also, on the binaries you’re going to have to have expected volume (meaning 125 days) and on 3 tick bars it’s going to be pretty intensive. The one benefit to binaries is you don’t need to lease a license as you’re trading on Nadex vs in ninja - just using Ninja to chart. But if you can’t load the chart that won’t help you.
They may have a free direct license but you can’t use ATM/ Chart Trader and you’re going to want to use ATM/Chart Trader. But if you can’t afford it that is one option if they do the free direct license still. You would have to check as I’m not sure (when you find out let me know please).
If you fund with like 5k and do 500,000 units round turn, they will reimburse your single broker nt7 license fee. But if you are going to fund with 1k then you will need to lease ninjatrader if you want to get the ATM and Chart trader. Depending on how many months you pay for it’s as low as $50 a month. Once you make some cash you can buy it (cheaper in long run and get a new pc). NinjaTrader stock, futures and forex charting software and online trading platform. Lease. “http://www.ninjatrader.com/purchase-lease.php”
The other option is to not lease a license and use one of their free [if they don’t have free direct edition] (ie MetaTrader 4 (aka MT4 and is a low resource usage platform) to enter orders and just use the demo key but you then need to manage your stops and take profits (not really that hard just chart trader and atm make things sooo much easier. But if your a bit tight on cash, this is a cheaper option as well.
So, in summary, the cheapest option to get started- start spot forex use nt7 to chart - don’t need to load 125 days to trade 10 or 20 is fine - (if no free direct addition of ninja) use MetaTrader 4 MetaTrader 4 - FXCM “http://www.fxcm.com/products/metatrader-4/” as it is is a platform they will give you that you can execute live trades on and demo. (as always trade demo before going live) to simply enter your trades. Once you have the cash, lease a license for NT7 and make life easier and buy a $500 PC or something to get going faster and easier.
