Pros and Cons of MetaTrader, NinjaTrader and Trade Station
NinjaTrader, MetaTrader and TradeStation are by far the most popular platforms among the retail trading crowd. Each one tends to focus on a special market niche. MetaTrader primarily caters to forex market. NinjaTrader’s fan base mainly comes from futures. TradeStation earns most of its business from equities traders.
Despite their popularity among certain markets, each platform is fully capable of handling the different types of markets. It all comes down to which platform suits your needs. They all offer automated trading as well as backtesting capabilities. If popularity plays a role in your decision making, then you may want to review Google Trends.
Advantages of MetaTrader | Disadvantages of MetaTrader | |
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Advantages of NinjaTrader | Disadvantages of NinjaTrader | |
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Advantages of Trade Station | Disadvantages of Trade Station | |
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If you would like to develop an indicator or strategy for any of these platforms, we offer conversion services between charting packages.
I work with meta trader 4 and ninja trader, I would like that in the meta trader 4 platform could set the horizontal lines of the price 1 per tick of price and ninja trader. that could put the swing indicator ninja trader and have had the watch is an indicator called Ticks Remaining, would be perfect for me could take my strategy to use in ninja trader meta trader 4 Thanks
Hello Shaun,
Firstly, thank you for your excellent website and blog. I enjoy reading your posts. I am a relatively new trader and have been using Tradestation to implement my trading strategy for the last few months. One of the limitations of the platform that I’ve discovered is that it is not possible to automate the configuration of a workspace. For example I have one workspace with over 50 charts configured for 50 different stock symbols, I would like to automate the configuration of this workspace so that I can change my stock list on a weekly basis. That is not possible in Tradestation, I have to manually update each chart with a new symbol. Does Metatrader or Ninjatrader suffer from these limitations? If so are there other trading platforms that you know of that allow greater flexibility for managing a changing set of stocks?
Best,
Mark
Hey Mark,
You’re going to find that problem with almost every charting platform. It’s sad to say that precious few of them are designed around portfolio trading.
–Shaun
Hi Shaun,
thank you for getting back to me, sincerely appreciated. Have you looked at some of the latest quantitative trading platforms, like Quantopian, or QuantConnect? They seem more in tune with portfolio trading. Just wondering if you have an opinion.
Also, I have a development background, and it seems to me that I can get what I need by using a good data feed and then programming the analysis myself. Do you have an opinion on what programming language to use, R, Python, Matlab etc? Also, is there a recommended source for data that is reasonably priced for both price and fundamental data?
Best,
Mark
Hey Mark,
Quantopian only supports equities. It will be a good options whenever they add forex.
I use R whenever doing analysis, especially if I’m likely to need charts and graphics to help understand the data. Whenever I wrote a portfolio backtester, I wrote my own in C#.
Data cost is going to depend heavily on how frequently you want to trade. If you use H1 charts or more and don’t rely on intrabar execution, then you can use the free data in MT4.
–Shaun
hi,
Thanks for the details. I use TDAmeritrade, but looking move out so I can auto trade futures. Which platform do you suggest?
thanks
vg
Hi VG,
I recommend Interactive Brokers for trading futures.
–Shaun
嗨 肖恩，如何用忍者进行交易，而不是模拟交易
Hi Mike,
You have to purchase a license from NinjaTrader in order to use the software for trading a real account.
–Shaun
A good summary.
Re. MetaTrader, you mention bugs in MQL; you could also mention the hideous unforgivable bugs in MetaTrader itself which make this platform only a playmobil toy for the big money-stealing economy of forex brokers.
Personally also, I use a set of tools rather than one. I also rely on experts and indicators, but I program them in Java and use the broker’s API. It gives full flexibility as it standardises both the code and the communication, decoupling my tools from a broker.
Best regards from UK.
Hi Sylvain,
If you have the time and resources, API programming is the way to go. I love exercising total control over my setup. Time and budget, however, often win out over control.
–Shaun
Hi Shaun
I am new to trading but am an experienced IT professional – a fair amount of experience implementing code primarily in C# and .NET in general.
Can you recommend any charting software (perhaps your setup) where once can gain control via customising through the AP?. Initially, I would like try a few swing trade strategies I have.
Thanks
NinjaTrader is probably the most accessible with your C# background.
I noticed that you did not include MultiCharts / MC .NET in your comparison. Any particular reason for this?
I would think MC would be the superior choice vs Tradestation as you own the license with the platform and are not limited to one broker.
I wrote this post almost 10 years ago, when MC barely existed.