Getting Started: Open your first NinjaTrader position from TradingView

Start CrossTrading in under 10 minutes. Follow along as we connect TradingView to NinjaTrader and open our first position through a TV alert in 4 easy steps.

NinjaTrader chart with moving averages, buy/sell order panel, and active trade indicators.
Exponential moving average on an E-Mini Nasdaq 100 chart
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The information in this article is outdated. We have transitioned CrossTrade from an external application to a NinjaTrader Add-On.
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Welcome to CrossTrade! Getting set up to use CrossTrade is easy and takes just a few minutes. Follow along as we:

  • Download the CrossTrade app
  • Enable ATI (Automated Trading Interface) in NinjaTrader
  • Create a webhook alert in TradingView
  • Open our first trade

Let's get started!

Step 1: Download the CrossTrade app

Before we do anything else we need to download the CrossTrade app to our Windows desktop and login.

Setup is simple, there's no complicated installation. Just open the download, and extract the CrossTrade folder to your Desktop.

CrossTrade desktop application login screen
CrossTrade desktop application login screen

Open the folder, double-click the CrossTrade app and login with your credentials.

Step 2: Enable ATI in NinjaTrader

Next, before CrossTrade can work, we need to enable the Automated Trading Interface inside NinjaTrader to allow CrossTrade to talk to it and send commands.

Enabling the AT Interface within NinjaTrader
Enabling the AT Interface within NinjaTrader

Inside NinjaTrader, go to Tools > Options > Automated Trading Interface. Make sure the AT Interface option is checked. Click Apply.

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You must restart NinjaTrader after saving before the AT Interface will be enabled.

Step 3: Create a webhook alert in TradingView

Creating an Alert inside the TradingView web application
Creating an Alert inside the TradingView web application

Inside of TradingView, open your favorite chart or indicator that you want to trade. Click on Create Alert, or press Alt + A.

Enabling the webhook URL inside a TradingView alert
Enabling the webhook URL inside a TradingView alert

Next, click on Notifications. Check the Webhook URL box and paste in your personal webhook URL provided inside the CrossTrade app.

Finding your personal webhook URL inside CrossTrade desktop app
Finding your personal webhook URL inside CrossTrade desktop app

Next, click on the Settings tab again and edit the Condition you want to trigger this alert on. For my simple example, I'm triggering based on a specific price because I believe it's a support level.

Setting NinjaTrader buy order inside TradingView alert
Setting NinjaTrader buy order inside TradingView alert

Finally, in the message block is where we put our command to send to NinjaTrader. This most basic command is to trigger a market buy order for one contract on NQ 06-24 when our condition is met.

The secret key value can be found inside CrossTrade under the Webhooks tab. This key is a security measure to make sure this webhook originated from you.

The full Message looks like this:

key=my-secret-key;
command=PLACE;
account=sim101;
instrument=NQ 06-24;
action=BUY;
qty=1;
order_type=MARKET;
tif=DAY;

Example alert message to be sent to NinjaTrader

It is also possible to use an Automated Trade Management (ATM) strategy with this order by adding a strategy field with the name of your ATM strategy inside NinjaTrader,

For more info about available commands and options, check out our guide.

Step 4: Wait for our alert signal to open our first trade

Our alert triggered inside TradingView! Awesome!

TradingView Alerts Log in browser application
TradingView Alerts Log in browser application

Let's take a look in CrossTrade to see what happened. The app received a signal almost immediately after it was fired in TradingView, processed it, and sent it to NinjaTrader.

Activity Log inside the CrossTrade desktop application
Activity Log inside the CrossTrade desktop application

Taking a look at our NinjaTrader logs, we can see the order was submitted through ATI, was accepted, opened successfully.

NinjaTrader trade logs showing filled trade from CrossTrade
NinjaTrader trade logs showing filled trade from CrossTrade

The order filled in NinjaTrader within one second of the alert firing in TradingView. Nice!


Wrapping Up

In just four simple steps, we setup CrossTrade, received our first BUY signal from a TradingView indicator, and opened our NQ contract inside NinjaTrader. Life is good.

For a video recap, see CrossTrade in action as it executes the trade alert we created above.

You're ready to start CrossTrading on your own! Be sure to join the discussion in our Discord channel.


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