If it wouldn´t sound like a serious, time consuming challenge one would take it as a bad joke. Sorry, I can``t help you with this issue and I wish you success. For me, the Gemini AI is absolutely helpful.
connections are not a big issue really as forex.com continues unabated. had a problem with “indicative” market price at rollover but I think that’s been fixed. testing now. thanks for the response
I am using Kinetick and multi-provider setup as my broker is not NinjaTrader.
Sumamry
The number of instruments being downloaded and the quality of the internet connection is typically the bottleneck for NinjaTrader.
Details:
I occasionally run into issues with NinjaTrader freezing. Its not CPU, and its not Disk. Its how many instruments you have collecting market data. I ran into an issue today where my workspace, was taking forever to load. When this happens I do the following
- I have a market analyzer that often collects lots of instruments. I wrote an addon that will save the list to disk, then wipe it out. I disconnect from data feed, clear out the list, then exit and restart.
- I wipe out just the db/cache folder. I use rmdir /s /q from a command prompt instead of using explorer becuase its drastically faster at removing it through explorer. If you don’t understand how do use this command read up on how to do it properly or dont’ use it.
- I still blow away the recently used instrument list from NinjaTrader. There was a signficant bug back in the day that drastically slowed down everything if that list got large. They supposedly fied it ages ago but i have never seen a reason for that list and removing the code that wiped it out on launch is more trouble then its worth.
I load a lot of charts, numerous market analyzers with dozens of instruments in them as well. Most of the time everything works fine but occasionally I get a day where NinjaTrader grinds to a halt. Its not CPU bound, its not disk bound. I am a software engineer and know if it were these things. Its not stock indicators or even my custom ones. Its the market data feed.
NinjaTrader is highly multi-threaded but despite that it is throttled by market data feed. This can cause entire groups of charts to have no mouse input (Ihave over a dozen charts on my screens).
The only thing I have come up with is that on some days
- My connection through the internet to Kinetick (specifically IQFeed as they provide the actual data) is hitting some problem.
- Kinetick (IQFeed) itself is experiencing some issue keeping up with providing the data.
I have a fiber internet connection and everything is wired so its something beyond the equipment in my home.
Sadly NinjaTrader has a fundamental functional problem in which its data feed can cause deadlocking/throttling of the entier application when it slows down. Ideally the data feed shoudl never impact anything in the app but the reality is it very much does.
You want to
- Limit how much historical data you pull in to just the amount of data you really need. Any optimizations you can make here to reduce how much market data you pull in can make a big difference.
- Be mindful of # of instruments you have actively in play.
- If you run into slwo performance on a given day have a back up plan that lets you reload NinjaTrader reducing initial amout of market data you are pulling in and gradually restore what is needed.
If your performance isn’t good when the data is disconnected (you have all your market data already downloaded) or on any regular basis you are potentially running into
- Slow computer/hard drive. You will need to check resource monitor/task manager to see if your CPU or disk is the bottleneck.
- You are consistently loading too many instruments
- Your intenret connection is too slow. If you are on WiFI, get wired connection. If your wired connection is slow you may need to upgrade. WiFI is a nice backup but shoudl not be your primary means of internet.
- If your Recent Instrumnt list in UI.xml under is large try clearing it.
- If your using custom indicators, try removing them. If the performance is fine then the custom indicators you are using may be too demanding.
This comes from years of experience using NinajTrader 8, and decades of software development experience.
NinjaTrader is far from perfect but its the most powerful tool I have found for being able to create custom code to help with trading. Custom code that would not be possible on other platforms and for which I would never trust with cloud based solutions. Unfortunately this can create problems more difficult to sort out regarding performance. This is a reason, not an excusde. It would be nice if they could solve the performance problem regarding market data. I haven’t yet requested it since they resist fixing anythign that can’t be easily reproduced and being intermittent its difficult. I experienced a performance problem just today but only for a short while.
For additional information I have run NinjaTrader on several different PC’s from intel 12th gen core i5 with only 16 gigs of ram to an AMD 9950 with 64 gigs of ram. It rarely if ever saturates the CPU depsite the load i give it. Its almost always market data, either from disk for historical data that already downloaded or downloading it from the interent.
1 Like
Thank you very much for taking so much time.
You are right in everything you wrote. But - I have only 7 windows of the MNQ open, no market analyzer at all, so already reduced to the minimum. Nevertheless it is freezing just from the start from time to time. By the way, if you dont close the explorer its not a big deal to delete the UI and the whole db folder, only taking seconds if it`s not full of data. I always leave it open, as well as the task manger to see where a bottleneck could be and this is still a riddle. Its just for watchinuntil NT stops writing on the SSD after the deleting procedure. And I empty the trash folder at least once a week, perhaps there is a connection. After I installed NT 8 the trash folder looked totally different and named Rithmic. Just one more possibility.
When I have deleted the database, the NT 8 folder ist below 300 MB, I copy it to an USB Stick or upload it to a cloud, so you have all your settings and scripts saved in case of a PC crash or any other circumstances that force you to make a new installation.
It maybe that in the meantime I found out one or the reason: I have a 5000 Tick MNQ Chart, set to U.S. Equities RTH which doesn`t run at all, is causing a delay in the charts or leads to freezing.
It also seems to me that NT 8 is very tick - sensitive, there are few or even no problems with time charts.
Like written, in many years of using NT 7 I never had such issues but you know, Ninjatrader terminated continuum (CQG), wich has been an excellent data provider for a a very long time. Maybe CGQ terminated it because they want to sell their own platform.
My current solution is to “outsource” the 5000 Tick RTH Chart to a windows tablet beside the PC and it works. This possibility is the only real advantage of NT 8 I can recognize.
Thanks again and good luck
You mentioned that you have used AI assistance to code some of your indicators. Scan your code for locks and if they exist, as AI for ways to remove them from your code.
There are no locks or bugs in the scripts, otherwise they wouldnt work at all. As they are generally running like the on board indicators, this cant be the reason.
There are always bugs and things that can be improved.
Anyway, NT8 8.1.7.x branch had been dog slow for many people so if you’re using it - try older version, like 8.1.6.3
Well, my impression ist that the latest version brought a little bit of improvement, perhaps Im wrong, I dont know. For sure I`m not the only former NT 7 user who is complaining. You could ask any AI where the weakness of NT 8 is coming from and youll get detailled answers. Guessing doesn`t make sense, one has to focus on solutions
If you ask AI if NT8 is an improvement over NT7 I’m pretty sure it will say YES. NT had made design tradeoffs in lieu of stability and to avoid complexity. If your indicators worked fine on NT7 - they should work fine on NT8 (logic and functionality).
Try latency indicator and see if you can corelate market/indicator activity with your issues: System vs Tick latency {code}
That`s a pretty good idea, thank you very much. How do I have to name the indicator?
You can ask AI to rename it for you. Current name is: SystemVsTickTimeMovable
That`s great, thank you very much. Do I have to insert the indicator in every chart window or is one window enough?
Every chart or at least one for each instrument you chart. If you’re not aware, NT8 also has Resource Monitor that shows how much CPU time each feature is using: How to Check the NinjaScript Output Monitor in NinjaTrader (for Slowness or Unresponsiveness) | QuantVPS Help Center: #1 Low-Latency Trading VPS (Chicago | New York | London)
Well, Im curious. The moment of truth will appear at 09:30. Only have the MNQ running, nothing else.
firebird607OP•vor 5 Monaten
There is nothing special in log. Yes I keep the minimum as possible too but the architecture of NT8 make it fragile. I have a lot progressed with development on NT8 and I think I do things correctly but it is like if there was sleep everywhere and lot of time wasted in synchronisation of thread and windows, instrument update… I discuss a lot with GPT that it agree with me.
The problem is their architecture is not resilient and then lag, freeze or crash where normally a sandbox would catch the issues and prevent crashing. There is I think no real solution, it is an architecture issue and they could don’t change that.
If (some of) your indicators are price based, one trick is to add NQ and MNQ to single chart and make some of your indicators use NQ data and some MNQ data. Doing so splits processing between two CPU cores, essentially doubling performance.
That`s absoultely logical, I will try it. Thanks again.
I do have some sub-minute charts but nothing at the tick level. One instrument doesn’t seem like it should be causing such issues.
If you are running WIndows 11 you should make sure your Documents folder is not set to auto-upload to the cloud. Windows 11 likes to set up a PC by default to store Documents and Desktop folders in OneDrive. This was a bad move by Microsoft as most people don’t have that kind of storage and some apps really do not like storing things in the cloud and store lots of files in Documents.
I would make sure your indicators are not part of the issue., Just because they build and work does not mean that they aren’t causing performance issues. If removing them from charts makes it responsive then something in them may be causing the issue. Indicators can cause a chart to load more market data, depending on what they do.
There are so many errors, I honestly don`t know where to start, for example I rebuild a workspace with the chart templates, what do I see? Just the candles. It´s a trial and error, somtimes this works, sometimes it doesnt, sometimes other things work, sometimes they dont. I delete the db and UI, it loads charts with giant data gaps, at the next try the charts are complete. I checked everything possible, there is no cloud connection. Over the last couple of months I `ve been more a computer hobbyist than a trader. I think at the end of the day I will return to NT 7 with Kinetick to make an end to this misery, especially after todays experience when I followed the tips here but nothing changed, it even worsened. I tried NT 8 first in 2016 and didnt like it from the first moment on, nowadays I hate it for wasting my time. And there`s the Rithmic desaster, who needs 50 ticks a second? I get eye cancer, the superdom makes me crazy, no more hold button which makes it almost impossible to place limit orders out of the current price range. If you dont earn money with fewer ticks, you wont earn with millions, absolutely senseless. It`s the combination of a weak software architecture with data overload. If you get in touch with the support, you know why they replaced humans by bots, they simply don`t know any answer.
And again: In NT 7 you compile, script ok or not, never worry about hidden bugs within it. This is a giant, time expensive step back.