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How It Works

Signal Share has three sides: your broadcasting NinjaTrader, CrossTrade in the middle, and each of your receiving NinjaTrader installations. Every side is yours. Each installation signs in with its own CrossTrade login, usually because each one holds a different Rithmic connection (NinjaTrader 8 allows one per instance).

How a trade flows in Signal Share

The broadcaster​

Every order that lands on the source account of your broadcasting login is checked against the broadcast source's filters:

  • Is the order on the right account?
  • Is it on an instrument the source is set up to share? (If you leave the instruments blank, every instrument is shared.)
  • Is the order coming from a trigger you want to share? (Manual orders from Chart Trader and DOM, automated orders from strategies and webhooks, or both.)

If the order matches, it becomes a signal and is sent out. The broadcasting NinjaTrader does not need to know anything about your receiving installations. It just hands the signal to CrossTrade.

CrossTrade​

CrossTrade takes the signal and fans it out to every active receiving login attached to that broadcast source. Along the way it:

  • Records the signal so it shows up in your broadcaster activity log.
  • Protects you from a runaway loop by capping how many signals your broadcasting login can send in 10 seconds. Past 100, it drops order modifications; past 300, it drops everything.
  • Holds your last 100 signals for 5 minutes, so a receiving installation that drops offline briefly receives them when it reconnects (add-on v1.13.8 or later).
Your broadcasting NinjaTrader account fills an order. The fill travels through the CrossTrade relay and reaches each of your receiving logins, each running its own NinjaTrader installation on a separate machine or VPS, with the same instrument, direction and quantity in the same millisecond window.

One fill, relayed to each of your receiving installations in the same execution window.

The receiver​

The receiving NinjaTrader has one job: take an incoming signal and place the corresponding order on the chosen target account, one-for-one with the broadcasting account. From the receiver's point of view, a Signal Share order is just another order. Every protection you already have in place on that installation still applies: opposing-position protection, strategy locks, the Account Manager monitors, kill switches, all of it.

If the broadcast source sends extra instructions along with the order, such as "match the broadcasting account's position size" or "if you are out of sync, flatten and stop," the receiver honors those too. Each broadcast source decides which of those instructions to send. See Broadcaster configuration for the full list.

Required add-on version​

Signal Share requires CrossTrade NT8 add-on v1.13.0 or later on both the broadcasting and the receiving NinjaTrader. If your add-on is older, CrossTrade will let you know in your NT8 activity log.

What does not travel over Signal Share​

  • The broadcasting account's positions. Only order events. The receiver builds its own position state from the orders it places locally.
  • The broadcasting account's balance, P&L, or account data. None of it is sent to your receiving installations.
  • Cross-receiver coordination. Your receiving installations do not know about each other and do not synchronize. A correction on one receiver is invisible to the others.
  • Direct broker access. The receiving NinjaTrader holds the broker connection. CrossTrade never touches your broker.