Troubleshooting
The four root causes below are NinjaTrader 8 problems and none of them apply to Tradovate. Skip to Tradovate Copier issues.
Most NT8 Trade Copier issues land on four root causes:
- The answer was in the logs the whole time.
- Another trade copier is running alongside CrossTrade.
- NinjaTrader hasn't been restarted recently.
- An account is authorized to more than one data feed at the same time.
Start here before asking for help. These four solve the bulk of what we see in support.
1. Check your logs first
Every order CrossTrade sees, every command we forward to NT8, and every reply NT8 sends back is logged. If a trade didn't happen the way you expected, the answer is almost always there.
- Alert History (crosstrade.io/docs/getting-started/alert-history). Every TradingView webhook hits this page first. Failed alerts have a built-in help modal explaining the specific error.
- Trade Copier → See Logs button on the Trade Copier dashboard. Shows every copier action, in order, with timestamps. Filter by leader/follower account to narrow it down.
- CrossTrade NT8 Add-On status panel in NT8. Inline log of every order the add-on submitted or rejected, with the reason. If you can see the order failed here, you don't need to guess what went wrong.
- Account Manager monitors (crosstrade.io/docs/account-manager/monitors). If a monitor flattened or blocked your account, it logs which rule fired.
Before you ask for help, screenshot the relevant log line(s). The answer is usually already in the log.
2. Do not run other trade copiers alongside CrossTrade
If you have Replikanto, ETP Trade Copier, CopyTrader, the Simple Trade Copier from the NinjaTrader Ecosystem, a prop firm's own copier, or any other third-party copier active on the same NinjaTrader accounts as CrossTrade, you will get duplicate fills, conflicting positions, and orders you didn't intend to send.
Each copier sees the same fills and each tries to react. Neither copier is wrong on its own, but the combined behavior is chaos.
If multiple copiers are running on your accounts, we cannot help you diagnose execution issues. The interaction is unbounded and every combination of two copiers reacting to each other's fills produces different symptoms. The only supported configuration is CrossTrade alone as the order-routing layer.
Scaled multi-account copying, leader/follower groups, symbol mapping, and stealth are all covered by the Trade Copier features, so the other copier isn't needed.
If you uninstall another copier, restart NinjaTrader so the change actually takes effect.
3. Restart NinjaTrader regularly
NinjaTrader has known memory and stability issues when left running for days at a time. Symptoms we see in support tickets after long uptimes:
- Orders silently rejected without a NinjaTrader error
- P/L reporting drifts from broker truth
- Trade Copier syncs stop firing
- The add-on shows "connected" but commands time out
- Charts freeze; new bars stop printing
Restart NinjaTrader at least once every 48 hours. Restarting daily is even better. CrossTrade shows a yellow uptime warning on the trading pages once you cross that threshold.
While you're at it: restart the machine once a week if NT8 runs on a dedicated PC or VPS. Windows updates, driver updates, and network stack quirks all benefit from a real reboot, not just a re-launch of NT8.
For more on keeping NT8 healthy, see Optimizing NinjaTrader Performance.
4. Don't authorize a single account to multiple data feeds
If the same NinjaTrader account is authorized to more than one data feed provider (e.g. account PROP1234 connected through both Feed A and Feed B at the same time), every order you submit through any trade copier gets doubled. NinjaTrader effectively submits the same order once per authorized feed, so a 1-contract order becomes 2 contracts, a 5-contract order becomes 10, and so on.
This behavior affects every NT8 trade copier on the market, not just CrossTrade. It's a quirk of how NinjaTrader routes orders when a single account spans multiple authorized feeds. The duplicate submissions happen inside NinjaTrader before any copier gets involved. We cannot fix this from our side, and neither can any other vendor.
To check: in NinjaTrader, open Connections and confirm each trading account is authorized to exactly one data feed at a time. If an account shows up under two connection profiles, disconnect one of them before placing orders.
If you legitimately need an account on multiple feeds (backup, redundancy, separate environments), only keep one connected at a time when you're trading.
Quick reference
| Symptom | Most likely cause | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Trade didn't copy at all | Mode mismatch (order vs execution), Kill Switch on, follower disconnected from broker, or the leader's connection still in its post-reconnect quarantine | Trade Copier → See Logs; Connection Resilience |
| Trade copied to the wrong instrument | Missing instrument mapping | Copier config → Instrument Filtering |
| Quantity was wrong on the follower | Ratio / fixed-qty / max-position config | Copier config → Position Sizing |
| Every order fills at 2× (or 3×) the expected size | Account is authorized to multiple data feeds simultaneously; NT8 duplicates the submission | Section 4 above |
| Some orders copied, some didn't | Another copier is also running, or NT8 uptime > 48h | Sections 2 and 3 above |
| Orders fire late | NT8 process is overloaded: too many indicators, charts, or strategies | Close unused charts; restart NT8 |
| Connected, but commands time out | Add-on stuck after long uptime | Restart NT8 |
| Add-on shows disconnected | Network blip, firewall, or expired session | Auto-Reconnect |
| P/L doesn't match my broker | NT8 uptime drift; restart resets the calc | Restart NT8; re-sync follower |
| Auto-Sync isn't correcting positions | Sync interval too long, or follower account excluded from sync | Auto-Sync Engine |
Tradovate Copier issues
The four causes above are NinjaTrader 8 problems. None of them exist on the Tradovate Copier: it runs in CrossTrade's cloud, there is no Add-On, no local platform to restart, and no NT8 data-feed routing to double your orders.
Start with the copy log, opened with See Logs on the Tradovate Copier page. It records submitted actions, broker rejections, drift warnings and corrections, and skip decisions, with leader and follower order IDs wherever that stage has them. Follower results and copier warnings are also attached to the leader's Alert History entry.
A copy was skipped as stale
CrossTrade applies a per-identity Tradovate request governor and reserves capacity for liquidations and reconciliation. A fill copy that waits past its copy deadline is skipped rather than entered late, on the basis that a late entry is worse than no entry. Large fan-outs make this more likely, since one leader event creates a broker request per active follower.
Everything stopped after I re-linked my account
Unlinking any Tradovate identity pauses all Tradovate copiers and monitors before removing the credential, and re-linking does not automatically re-enable them. Re-enable each copier and monitor by hand after a re-link.
Tradovate quick reference
| Symptom | Most likely cause | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Manual leader trades never copy | Copier is in signal mode, which only sees webhook commands | Copier config, switch to execution or order mode |
| Nothing copies at all | Copier inactive, identity unlinked, or instrument filter excludes the symbol | Copy Log, My Account → Brokers |
| Gap in copies around a disconnect | Offline fills are not replayed | Enable drift correction; Copy Log |
| Replacement instrument not used | Leader order was limit, stop, or bracketed | Copy Log skip entry |
| Follower size drifts by a fraction | Execution-mode signed carry, converges across entries and exits | Copy Log |
| Fixed-qty follower stayed drifted mid-position | Fixed-qty followers only auto-correct to flat | Copy Log drift warning |
| One follower missing from an otherwise good copy | Independent follower results, timeout or rejection | Copy Log per-follower outcome; correct that follower, and don't resend the leader signal, which can duplicate real exposure |
| Copy skipped as stale | Past the copy deadline under request load | Copy Log |
| Cannot create a second copier on a pair | One copier per leader/follower pair | Existing copier config |
| All copiers paused | Identity was unlinked and re-linked | Re-enable each copier |
| Inverted follower skipped a trade | Only unpriced market entries invert; priced and bracketed entries are skipped | Copy Log skip entry |
| A cancel or change never reached the follower | It was made inside Tradovate's own platform (signal mode), or the order was not placed by the copier | Manage copied orders through CrossTrade, or use order mode |
The Tradovate Copier page explains each of these in full, mode by mode.
Related docs
- Trade Copier Overview - full feature reference
- Tradovate Copier - modes, per-follower settings, and the NT8 parity table
- Trade Copier FAQs - most-asked questions about setup, prop firm usage, and behavior
- Trade Copier Configuration - every field in the copier config modal
- Account Manager FAQ - monitor, kill switch, and account-state questions
- Webhooks Troubleshooting - for signal-routing issues that aren't copier-specific
- Connection Health - Auto-Reconnect and Data Watchdog
Still stuck?
Email us at support@crosstrade.io with:
- Details about what happened and when
- The exact alert / command that misbehaved (copy from Alert History)
- The log line from the add-on or copier showing what happened
- On NinjaTrader 8: NT8 uptime at the time (visible in the dashboard NT8 Health Monitor), and confirmation that no other copier is installed in NT8
- On Tradovate: the copier mode, the leader and follower accounts, and the Copy Log lines with their leader and follower order IDs