HAPPY HOLIDAYS

First I want to say ,Happy Holidays Christmas , Hanukkah , Kwanzaa, American Samoa Day. The holidays see a lot of us traveling on the road, including me.

This holiday I did something crazy in trading Christmas week. I did well the first part of the week, the lously the last day. I broke even so I cannot complain.

This indicator came about becuase I was constantly getting distracted AND I was trading on a laptop. When you are using electronics now , it seems like power outlets are never enough. I was not the only one using a laptop. Or iphone. Or Blackberry. Or iPad or any number of devices that needed to be plugged in on the power strip.

ANY THING THAT CAN GO WRONG, WILL GO WRONG

Trading from a laptop has a different set of problems than trading from a desktop computer. You are always attached to the power brick. For example, my laptop was unplugged once while I was trading. I was sitting in front the computer so it wasn’t a problem , just annoying.

This can be a big problem if your computer shuts down while you are in a trade. Bracket orders ( what most of us use with a profit target and stop loss ) stay on your trading platform. In this case my laptop. So if my laptop’s battery failed , ran out, whatever then I will have big problems in that OCO orders would be in the market.

You can check out this blog post that explains it a little bit better CLICK EL HERE

THE BATTERY LEVEL INDICATOR

So I wrote this battery level indicator for just this situation. The indicator shows the percentage of power remaining in your laptop’s battery.

Download NinjaTrader 7 Battery Level Indicator (FREE) here

It is very straight forward to use. you can use it in strategies or on the chart.

Parameters:

• Alert Level – This is the level where the indicator will alerting you
• Alerts On / Off - Turn on or off audio alerts.
• Show Battery Indication – This displays when the laptop is running on battery power

USING WITH STRATEGIES

Ok, this post is getting long so I will split it into two sections. The next post will show how to set your strategies so that if you are trading on a laptop and you laptop is about to fail, the strategies will close all positions and shut down.

I don’t post often, but I do have a mailing list you can subscribe to in the meantime. I usually write about Ninjatrader programming, but other trading topics as well. Subscribe to TraderWerks Blog by Email