This article will review NinjaTrader, a sophisticated derivatives trading platform with extensive research capabilities for futures, FX, and options. It was established in 2003 and is a member of the National Futures Association (NFA).
Summary
- The commission rates are as low as $.09 per Micro contract.
- The minimum deposit is also low, that is $400.
- It has three license levels with varying features and commission rates.
- Users can also take advantage of the Demo account to learn about the platform.
- The software is free to download, and the installation process is hassle-free.
- They have a dedicated Help section that contains articles and videos to help users understand NinjaTrader working.
- The NinjaTrader support forum system is fast and gives relevant answers to queries.
Table of contents
What is NinjaTrader?
NinjaTrader is a software company based in the U.S. that provides a powerful derivatives trading platform specializing in futures, forex, and options with advanced research tools. It was founded in 2003 and is also a registered National Futures Association (NFA) company. Due to their sophisticated trading platform with excellent charting, real-time analysis, customizable technical indicators, Chart Trader, and thousands of add-ons from 3rd-party developers have attracted more than 60,000 users and 450+ developers.
NinjaTrader platform is an ideal choice for active traders who demand heavy technical analysis tools. As a brokerage, the company has partnered with several supporting brokerages, including Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade. This will give traders access to other markets, with options on futures, CFDs, and equities.
You can also automate your futures trading bot using trading bots. To learn more, read about the 3 best futures trading bots.
How to open your NinjaTrader account?
Before moving on to steps on how to open an account, few things you should know:
- NinjaTrader has three licenses available for users “Free,” “Lease,” and “Lifetime.” These licenses differ in functionalities and rates.
- Users can open a free account, but it requires a funded account.
- The minimum deposit at NinjaTrader is $400.
- Users can also connect one or more brokerage accounts, including Oanda, T.D. Ameritrade, Forex.com, City Index, Interactive Brokers, and FXCM. However, in these cases, the user’s money will be held by their existing broker. NinjaTrader will only provide the platform.
- At NinjaTraders, users can open an Individual, Joint, Corporate/Trust, or Retirement account.
NinjaTrader Review: Steps to Open an Account
- Visit NinjaTrader’s official website and click on “Open Account” on the top left corner of their website homepage.
- After that, select the type of account you want. Users can choose between Futures, Forex, and options. Here, we are selecting Futures.
- NinjaTrader Brokerage partners with Phillip Capital and Dorman Trading firms to deliver access to the futures markets. So, you can select anyone out of the two options. We will be moving ahead with the option Phillip Capital.
- Once you select Phillip Capital, you will be redirected to their account opening process. You have to enter a few details, including a valid email address and password, and click on the next.
- Later on, they will ask you to select the account type. Give your valid personal information, including your name, date of birth, and address. You will also have to answer a few questions regarding your financial and employment situation. Plus, you will have to verify your identity and address.
- They accept National ID, passport, and driver’s license for identity verification. For address verification, users can upload their utility bills and bank statements.
- Besides all this, users have to clear a few more levels, including information on your account usage, Customer agreement, Disclosure Documents, Tax, and Bank Information.
Once online registration is completed, you will receive an email from NinjaTrader to fill out an Options Request Form.
How to use NinjaTrader?
- Step1: Install NinjaTrader: To start using NinjaTrader, first, download it. If you are a new user, then you have to register to get a license key. You can register here to get the license key. After downloading, start the installation process. Once it gets completed, open it.
- Step2: Data Source Connecting: This software comes with end-of-day market data for U.S. stocks and forex, and that too for free. To connect to the free data source: Click on file -> Connect -> Kinetick -> End of Day. For confirmation, you will see a green box “Connected – Kinetick” at the bottom left of the window.
- Step3: Load a Price Chart: To load a chart, click on the file -> New -> Chart. After this, type “A.A.P.L” into the text box of the dialog box “Data Series.” For now, let’s consider the three fields including, type, Chart Style, and Days to load.
Type represents the periodicity of your chart like Days, weeks, months, etc. Under Days to load, you can enter the number of days that you want to pack in your chart. NinjaTrader supports ten years of free data. So, you can select accordingly and click “OK.”
- Step4: Loading Indicators: Select the third icon from the right. You will see “Indicators” when you move your mouse over it. A dialog box will appear, and there you can select an indicator of your choice. Click “OK” to load it.
Now you are all set to start trading and experimenting.
NinjaTrader Review: Paper Trading
Paper trading or demo trading are two terms that are used interchangeably. Usually, people prefer paper trading to test their strategies and market analysis to check how trades might play. However, NinjaTrader gives this opportunity to its users to create a demo account for free. As a result, users can try out both the markets and trading platforms.
The process of downloading a NinjaTrader demo account is quite straightforward. Scroll down to the end of the website and select “Free Live Data.” A new page will open. There you will have to fill in a few details as shown in the image. After that, you will receive an email containing your login details and how you can download the platform.
Using this free account, users can learn and engage in trade simulation, signal development, backtesting, and comprehensive evaluation of the program. This demo account lasts for one month.
NinjaTrader Fees
Under this, we are dividing NinjaTrader fees into two categories: fees related to trading and non-trading costs like inactivity or withdrawal fee.
Trading Fees
Please note that NinjaTrader offers three licenses, and the fees depend on what type of license the user has.
Futures Fees
This platform offers a low fee for U.S. stock index futures and is even lower for other futures products. The minimum initial deposit a user has to pay is $1,000 to fund their new account. Also, the commission charged by them depends on the user’s license, but it could go as low as $.09 per Micro contract with a Lifetime license. Besides all this, users also have to pay fees independent from this platform, like order routing fees or exchange fees.
The default order routing fee is $0.15, as ‘Continuum’ is the default connection. However, if a user selects a ‘Rithmic’ connection, it will be $0.25 per contract.
Non-trading fees
NinjaTrader has high non-trading fees, including Account fees, inactivity fees, deposit, and withdrawal fees. The account fee depends on the license the user will select:
- The ‘Free’ license is free, and no payment is required.
- The ‘Lease’ license has $720 for annual, $425 for semi-annual, and $225 for quarterly fees.
- For the ‘Lifetime’ license user has to pay a $1,099 single payment.
The inactivity fee is around $25. This fee is applied when you log in to the platform but don’t place any round trade. Finally, there is no deposit fee, but the withdrawal fee is $30 for international wire transfers.
NinjaTrader review: Features and Tools
Charting
Users can make full use of NinjaTrader charting capabilities for free. They provide:
- Numerous chart styles are available in default. Plus, other chart styles can also be developed by third parties and imported.
- Hundreds of NinjaTrader Indicators to choose from and an extensive network of third-party developers.
- Drawing tools to measure markets with precision for customized analysis.
- Multi-time frame plus multi-instrument analysis
- Robust real-time analysis to easily monitor hundreds of markets based on the user’s predefined conditions to rank.
- Other features include Time & Sales, Level II, Hot Lists, News, and many more.
NinjaTrading review: Management
SuperDOM order entry and trade management system of NinjaTrader gives users enhanced customizability. User’s get leverages such as:
- Direct and Straightforward trade visualization.
- Order entries, cancellations, and modifications through a single click.
- They can use it with the Advanced Trade Management module.
Advanced Trade Management Tool
ATM is one of the strong selling points of NinjaTrader. Their advanced and sophisticated technology gives users an option to predefine their personal trade management strategies. The features users can use under this are:
- Predefined trade entries and exits.
- Multiple Trades of any quantity and scale positions.
- Create intelligent stop-loss orders.
This will help users yield higher profits as the entries and exit orders are submitted automatically within milliseconds. With this, it will eventually lead to less stress for users.
Automation
With this, users will be able to:
- Buy and deploy their automated strategies.
- Execute and analyze the automated methods.
- Create or purchase the third-party custom chart indicators.
- And Process trading signals that too from external applications.
All this will allow you to make far better trades than you could have done manually.
Market Replay
NinjaTrader‘s Market Replay is a handy tool, which gives users a market replay function. Using this, users can download data of a specific day and practice trading in a particular market. This sophisticated tool is a brilliant way to develop a strategy.
NinjaTrader Review: Trailing Stop
Trailing stop is a type of dynamic stop-loss order. As the price moves in your favor, the trailing stops also start moving behind the price, limiting losses and locking in profits.
To build a custom trailing stop, you can use NinjaTrader’s A.T.M. strategy. For further details, you can click here.
Backtesting
Another feature NinjaTrader offers is Backtest, which allows users to analyze the historical performance of a particular strategy. You can check more details here, like how to backtest a strategy or what the requirements are.
NinjaTrader Ecosystem
NinjaTrader Ecosystem is a part of NinjaTrader, one of the largest communities of trading educators, professional app developers that help users accomplish their trading goals.
Is NinjaTrader safe?
As mentioned above, NinjaTrader is regulated by the National Futures Association, a self-regulatory organization that protects investors and handles the financial derivatives markets. Moreover, NinjaTrader also uses encryption for the login process whenever possible. However, you should also be aware that NinjaTrader is not a listed company and doesn’t disclose its financials.
Customer Service
NinjaTrader‘s support system is quite extensive, and their support team excels in prompt replies. They answer user’s queries within 15 minutes during market hours. Users can connect with NinjaTrader through telephone, email, and support forums. The live chat support is also excellent and fast, plus most of the answers were relevant and satisfactory.
The only disadvantage of this platform’s customer service is that it does not support 24/7 availability. When the futures market is open, the trading desk is available at all times. On the other hand, brokerage support teams are functional only during U.S. market hours.
Also, for critical trade issues, it provides direct phone support for brokerage clients. International traders can also connect directly with dedicated Spanish, Russian and German brokerage service teams.
NinjaTrader Review: Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| The trading fee is low. | High withdrawal fee. |
| It has excellent charting, analysis tools, partial and complete strategy automation. | There is no NinjaTrader API development kit that it offers. |
| NinjaTrader tutorial lessons in the form of articles and videos. | Users can only trade derivatives like futures and options. |
| A dedicated live chat, phone support with fast responses are available. | No NinjaTrader mobile app is available. |
| A demo account is also open to learning about the working of the platform. | 24/7 support is not available. |
| Download NinjaTrader for free and is open-source. |
NinjaTrader review: Conclusion
NinjaTrader is a leading giant in futures and forex trading. The free platform provides an excellent opportunity before deciding to trade live. Its low commission fees, free, and advanced tools, semi-automated execution, and active community forum will take you several steps ahead of others. Except for a few limitations, like the high withdrawal fees, the lack of availability of the mobile platform, and only a window-specific desktop platform, this platform is quite exotic and safe. So, get started with no-cost demo accounts within a few minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions:
How to update NinjaTrader software?
Follow the steps to update NinjaTrader manually:
The first thing you have to do is copy your license key from the Help section -> License Key, then exit NinjaTrader.
Now, click here to go to the update page of the NinjaTrader site.
There you have to enter the license key, and press submit.
Select the latest version (Currently NinjaTrader 8) and select download.
How to import indicators into NinjaTrader?
To import indicator, you have to:
Download the indicators and keep them in the compressed .zip file.
Now, select menu File -> Utilities -> Import NinjaScript.
Next, you have to select the downloaded .zip file.
If the import gets successful, NinjaTrader will confirm it.
How to get NinjaTrader free?
NinjaTrader software is free, and users can download it directly from their official site. However, you can use only the core essentials of NinjaTrading software. If you do buy it, then you get additional features like a Broker facility.
How to use NinjaTrader Strategies?
To run a NinjaTrader strategy:
Select the “Strategies” menu by right-clicking on the chart. You can also press CTRL + S HotKey to access the Strategies window.
Now, select a strategy in the “Available” section, and click on the add button.
Once the strategy gets added, set any strategy properties based on your preferences.
Now, Press the OK button to run it.
How to place a stop order in NinjaTrader?
To place a stop order, click on “Tools” from the Control Center window. Now click on “Hot Keys.” A dialog box will appear. Click on the Order Entry. Fill the records and click on apply, then click on “OK” to complete the procedure.
