How to Use a Trade Copier with NinjaTrader for Simultaneous Trades 

Equities traders who invest through multiple accounts need an efficient way to execute orders across their various accounts and brokerages. Manually entering multiple orders is inefficient, increases the chances for error, and sometimes is too slow to fully capitalize on opportunities.

That’s where Duplicate Account Actions comes in. As a premium trade copier for NinjaTrader (also TradingView, Tradovate and Rithmic), Duplicate Account Actions makes it easy to execute orders across accounts and brokerages. Here’s how to use it.

The Advantages of a Trade Copier

Trade copiers automate the process of executing identical trades in multiple accounts, helping you trade efficiently. Professional investors frequently use these to execute orders across client accounts, and individual traders can use them across multiple brokerage, retirement or other investment accounts.

The flexibility of Duplicate Account Actions lets you decide whether and how trades are duplicated in different accounts. During setup, you can adjust trade execution, position sizing, stop losses, one cancels the other (OCO) rules, and more.

These features make Duplicate Account Actions well-suited even if your trading accounts are different sizes or use different strategies. It’s also these features that set our Affordable Indicators premium trade copier apart from more basic ones. You’ll find it easy to leverage the various options that make Duplicate Account Actions so powerful.

Step 1: Installation and Basic Configuration

You’ll need to download and install Duplicate Account Actions. Then, you can go about integrating it with NinjaTrader (or another platform) and connecting accounts:

1. Integrate: Integrate Duplicate Account Actions with your NinjatTrader account, and open the trade copier within the platform.
2. Link Accounts: Go to the settings for Duplicate Account Actions, and set the master account and follower accounts. The master account is your primary trading account, and follower accounts are the ones that’ll receive duplicated trades.
3. You’ll only be able to choose accounts already in NinjaTrader, so you’ll have to first add any new accounts to NinjaTrader before selecting them in Duplicate Account Actions. In almost all cases, your primary and follower accounts in Duplicate Account Actions will mirror those in NinjaTrader.
4. Test Trade: At this point, trades placed in the master account should automatically be duplicated in the follower accounts. You can place a small trade to confirm.
5. It’s generally best to keep your test trade somewhere between $5 and $10. This is small enough to test the setup, yet large enough to bypass trade restrictions that some accounts might have. For instance, an IRA account with a brokerage might not let you trade equities less than $2 or $5 directly online.

Step 2: Set Position Sizing Rules

Position sizing rules are perhaps the most important adjustment that you’ll set. Not all accounts have the same portfolio sizes, and you probably don’t want to duplicate trades exactly across all accounts.

For example, a $5,000 trade might fit well with your risk-tolerance strategy in a $100,000 account. A trade that size probably isn’t advised for a side account that has just $25,000.

Most traders use percentage-based position sizing rules. These let you duplicate orders as a percentage of what’s placed in the master account, such as 10, 25 or 50%. You can choose any percentage, and different accounts can have different percentages.

If you prefer, fixed-ratio duplication will copy trades at the same order size. You also can set up custom sizing rules for more granular control.

Step 3: Filter Trade Types

The other highly important adjustment is filtering trade types. This is where you’ll determine which trades get copied to which accounts. Not all trades are suitable for all accounts.

For example, you might duplicate day trades in only margin accounts so that you don’t have a 2-day wait to access the capital again. Swing trades might go into brokerage accounts, but not necessarily retirement accounts or day trading accounts. Of course, they can go to those accounts, if you want and the account rules allow.

Options include adjusting buy orders, sell orders, limit orders, market orders, and other order types.

Step 4: Configure Stop-Loss and Take-Profit Settings

In many cases, stop-loss and take-profit settings remain the same across all accounts. The same risk-reward normally applies to a trade regardless of its size or type. Should you want to, however, these settings can also be adjusted for each follower account.

Stop-loss and take-profit customizations are one place where Duplicate Account Actions really sets itself apart from other, more basic trade copiers. With Duplicate Account Actions, you can create:

• Tighter parameters for more conservative accounts
• Looser parameters for more risk-tolerant accounts
• Custom tired exits based on individual account strategy

Of course, you could also simply copy exits as they’re made manually in the master account.

Step 5: Choose Execution Mode

Your execution mode determines how copied orders are actually made in follower accounts. The two basic options are Executions Mode and Orders Mode. The former copies trades as they’re actually executed in the master account, while the latter copies trades as the orders are placed.

For more advanced strategies, there’s also once cancels the other (OCO) and other customizations. OCO allows for detailed rules where an execution in one account can cancel the order in another account. This can be especially helpful for risk management, and overall portfolio management across accounts.

Step 6: Setting Alerts and Notifications

To stay informed of real-time trade actions, you can have alerts sent to your computer, email and/or phone. Set these up as makes sense for you, depending on trading activity and lifestyle needs.

Ongoing Support and Help

Should you need help with any of these steps, or at any point, reach out to support here at Affordable Indicators. We’re here to make sure you get the maximum benefit from our tools.

Streamline Your Multi-Account Trading

If you’re an advanced trader with multiple accounts, Duplicate Account Actions will streamline your account management. Set it up today, and you’ll be easily replicating trades the next day the market is open — or even tonight if you trade futures. You’ll find that this is truly the best premium trade copier for NinjaTrader.