I have been trading spot forex and am changing to futures. In spot forex I needed to use a multiplier to get my actual orders to match the simulated C2 trading account. I am using a live IB feed. Is there a conversion factor that I will use in order to match my actual trading account to the EUR, GBP and AUD futures contracts? The multiplier I used in spot fx was several digits different than it seemed it should have been. thanks
Steve:
I’d like to help, but I don’t really understand your question. Before you spend too much time clarifying, though, if you have a question about NinjaTrader configuration, probably the best place to turn is directly to NinjaTrader Support, since they know their own product better than I do, and I fear I can only lead you astray.
If your question is not about NinjaTrader configuration, then perhaps you can re-ask it with a bit more detail, and I will try my best to answer.
Matthew
Steve, I don’t use Ninja but I can comment on several issues I’ve noticed interfacing Tradestation to different brokers.
Price multipliers
Short version there is no standard for the use of decimals among futures brokers and data feeds. Example, if the Yen (JPY/USD equiv.) is 0.012345 at C2 (and on the CME site), it will be 1.2345 in Tradestation and 12345 on a Trading Technologies feed. C2 does a yeoman’s job of trying to keep all that sorted out but I’ve seen decimal errors in real-trading fill reports. Remember, it’s not just the scaling between your computer and C2 but between C2 and the subscriber’s broker. To start, I’d find another C2 system that trades your symbols and compare decimals to your data feed. A possibility to avoid screwups is to keep stop and limit orders on your computer and send a market order when the price is touched.
Size multipliers
Here, futures are easier than forex. Some forex brokers use lots, some use mini lots and some use currency units. In futures, a contract is a contract and you can find its size in currency units on the cmegroup site – they aren’t all the same.
Symbol conventions
Again a mess. First, all the actives at the CME are expressed as xxx/USD so some of them may be the inverse of what you’re used to in forex. And the symbol names are a bigger mess than the price multipliers. The electronic Yen futures will be JY in Tradestation, @JY at C2 and 6J at the CME. And they may all use different conventions for the month and year notations. Again, C2 does its best to sort it all out but…
Good luck!
