Why do my Volume bars keep disappearing? NT7

[Trankuility]

I'm using a live NT7 account and live MBT account. I've created a chart using Range bars and added the VOL Indicator. At first the chart w/indicator looks fine. But as soon as a new bar is created most of the Volume bars disappears and only 1 large volume bar can be seen. It then only shows the bars going forward as they are created, and the appear to be completely incorrect. If I scroll back through the history all the volume bars reappear, but as soon as I move forward to the recently created bar they all disappear again.

If I use the 1 min time frame, the same thing happens except I can see 9 bars instead of 1.

I disconnected and reset the instrument in the options but that didn't fix it.

Below are examples with the Range bar chart.

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello Trankuility,

Can you please confirm you have NinjaTrader 7.0.0.22 installed. You can check this at Control Center-->Help-->About.

Unfortunately I do not have an MBTrading account available that provides historical tick data for forex instruments. Could you please send me your MBTrading username and password at support[at]ninjatrader[dot]com. Please put 'Attn Jason' in the subject header and reference this forum thread. Please include a period (+ time zone) when I can test your MBTrading connection.

Did you received the historical volume data from MBTrading as well during a previous session? Please note that NinjaTrader acts like a radio receiver and displays the data it receives. There seems to be a discrepancy between historical and volume forex data. How is volume data reported in MBTrading for forex instruments?

[hoohah42]

Is there a solution to this problem yet?

I've been trying out NT7 for a couple of days and the one really annoying thing I've experienced is this problem of the volume bars disappearing whenever the first new bar paints. Once this happens, only new bars have volume bars associated with them - I have to "Reload All Historical Data" to get "old bar" volume.

Playing with VOL indicator settings - if I change "Calculate on bar close" to False then the previous volume bars disappear immediately instead of when the next bar paints.

I too use MB Trading as my broker, so is the problem related to them?

Thanks,

T. Edwin King

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello T. Edwin King,

NinjaTrader acts like a radio receiver and displays the data it receives. Unfortunately, real-time volume data is received this way from MBTrading - historical and real-time forex volume data is different.

Real-time volume data is reported at much higher values. It looks like there is no historical volume data once these bars are being created. There is still historical volume data, however you do not see it due to the extended price axis. If you click your middle mouse button in the VOL panel where no data is reflected, you will see VOL values reported in the mini data box.

Unfortunately, there is no workaround to have real-time and historical forex volume data in synch.

[hoohah42]

Thanks for the info - it seems to make sense.

My next question is, then, if I were using a real-time data provider such as eSignal or Kinetick, would I have the same issue?

Basically I'm thinking RTD provider for Price/Volume data, and MB Trading for Orders and Level II data - is that realistic?

I currently use RealTimeData.com for my data (FOREX) which you do not support (or vice-versa), so I'm not able to test that configuration. And I don't want to go thru the trouble of switching RTD providers just to find out.

Thanks again,

T. Edwin King

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hello T. Edwin King,

With real-time and historical data coming from a service like eSignal or Kinetick, volume would be the same regardless of whether you were viewing real-time or historical data. However, in order to submit an order to MB Trading, their data must be used as the real-time data source - this may mean that even a secondary provider wouldn't do the trick for you.

[hoohah42]

Thanks both Kyle and Jason for your honest feedback.

I forget what drew me to look at NinjaTrader but the feature set I am most interested in now is Advanced Trade Mgmt, which I know I can make use of with my current setup + NT 7. So I'll probably try the 3-month lease and see how it goes.

Another surprising thing that has piqued my interest is the the script language is C#, which I've been developing in professionally since .Net beta 1. Most of my career has been spent handling Partner Integrations and data impedance mismatches, so I may try to tackle this volume magnitude disparity problem with an indicator of my own...we'll see.

So it looks like multiple Charting packages for me for a while still.

Regards,
T. Edwin King

[hoohah42]

Not trying to beat this to death, but I don't think I got a clear answer to the question of whether or not this "real-time vs. historical volume data disparity problem" is specific to MB Trading? Or is this a common problem with all brokers' real-time (FOREX) data?

Thanks,
T. Edwin King

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

The issue is specific to MBTrading.

When I test Interactive Brokers, historical forex volume data is not supported and will be listed as per a value of 1.

PFG and Gain provide real-time and historical forex volume data that is not different from each other.

[hoohah42]

OK - Thanks, Jason. That answers my question well.

Plus I have a much clearer picture of how NT 7 can fit into my tool set, and what the current limits are.

Regards,
T. Edwin King