Technological advancements have revolutionized forex trading by giving rise to platforms that allow traders to access the market in real-time. Gone are the days when people had to call brokers, let alone congregate in exchanges to place trades. Market orders are now triggered with a click of a button on platforms offered by brokers. NinjaTrader is one such platform that connects market participants to liquidity providers.
Understanding NinjaTrader
Introduced in 2003, NinjaTrader is a software or trading platform that offers charts for various securities. It operates as an alternative to the notable MetaTrader, allowing people to study price action and carry out technical analysis while leveraging various tools on offer.
Offered by a number of brokers, the platform allows people to carry out analysis and implement trades on various securities such as currency pairs, commodities, and even stocks. While it is free to use the platform for charting, market analysis, and live trading, one must pay to access premium features such as advanced order types.
The NinjaTrader stands out as an ideal trading platform for people who would like access to a wide array of technical analysis tools. Unlike other platforms, the advanced platform with premium features comes with customizable technical indicators and the capability to add add-ons from third-party developers.
Getting and running NinjaTrader
Many brokers have already added support for the platform. Consequently, one only needs to search for brokers and open an account. If you are new to the business and have never used the platform, you can always start with the demo version to get a feel of how it works before engaging in live trading.
Once you open an account with a broker that has added support, you will receive a download link for the platform. To run the software, you simply need to click on the desktop icon, from where you should be able to enter the username and password sent to the email.
Exploring the platform
Once you log in, everything should be set up automatically, presenting the platform as the one below.
Control center
It’s the most important window on the platform and comes with the settings portal, where everything is done. The window features three dropdown menus; File, Tools, and Help. One can add new charts to the trading terminal on the File dropdown menu. For instance, if you were trading EURUSD and wished to access the GBPUSD chart, by clicking on the menu, you will add the chart.
It is on the File menu, where you can set the alerts on various currency pairs in addition to opening and closing trades. The menu also comes with a window for accessing news. It is also here where one can connect and disconnect to a server or save the current terminal setting.
Below the Control Center page are several tabs crucial to performing various operations on NinjaTrader.
Orders tab
From this tab, one can access all the instruments on offer. Upon clicking the tab, one can adjust the financial instrument to trade, the order type to enter, and the type of trade to buy or sell.
Upon placing a buy or sell trade, it will appear in the empty area of the Orders sector with all the parameters entered. This way, you can monitor whether the opened position is accruing losses or profits.
Account performance tab
It also appears in the Control Center window and summarizes the overall performance of one ‘s account. From this tab, you can get insights on the average wins and losses, net profit, and profit factors.
The tab is divided into three columns, one specifying All Trades taken, the other all the long or buy trades, and the other the short or sell trades. The categorization makes it easy to get a clear picture of trading habits. In addition, it is possible to adjust the display to a specific period to visualize performance at a specific period in time.
Market analyzer
The Market Analyzer tab makes it easy to monitor price data on various currency pairs that one has selected instead of having to sieve through an entire pool. The tab lists the bid, ask price, last price, and net change of selected currency pairs.
It is also under this tab where one can customize and add more custom windows to list additional charts of importance. For instance, one can customize to be able to visualize with ease the Daily High, Daily Low Volume, and 52-week high of currency pairs of interest.
Tools dropdown
It is a window that contains all the necessary tools needed to carry out technical analysis. You can access technical indicators such as moving average, stochastic, Fibonacci, etc. Additionally, one can import and export historical NinjaTrader data from this portal.
It is also from the Tools window where one can change the different options/ settings on the platform and set hotkeys.
Help window
For those new to the NinjaTrader platform, the Help window contains valuable navigation information. In addition to necessary information on how to operate the platform, one can contact the support team from here to get assistance on any issue.
Forex charts
The default setting on NinjaTrader comes with charts featuring a standard structure consisting of bullish green candlesticks, which appear when the price is rising, and red/ bearish candlesticks that appear when prices are tanking.
The underlying period of the candlesticks that appear on the chart is located on the x-axis from where they can be adjusted, and the price is located on the Y-axis. At the top of the chart is where one can adjust the chart to show candlesticks in various time frames.
In addition, the NinjaTrader charts come with indicators attached by default. The 14 period and 21-period Simple Moving Averages are displayed on the chart automatically.
Final thoughts
The NinjaTrader platform connects traders with liquidity providers that offer various currency pairs to trade in addition to stocks commodities, among other securities. The platform can be accessed by creating an account with any broker that has added support. It stands out as an ideal trading platform given the excellent charting and great technical analysis tools. It also enables partial and full strategy automation.
