Connect The Trading Pit to NinjaTrader (Tradovate)
The Trading Pit reaches NinjaTrader over Tradovate, not Rithmic — and that single fact is where most of the trouble starts, because The Trading Pit runs both. Their Classic Futures Challenges are the Rithmic ones, served by R|Trader, ATAS, Quantower and Volsys. NinjaTrader is only on the Prime Futures Challenge, alongside Tradovate and TradingView. If you are on a Classic challenge, no amount of fiddling with the Connections menu will help; you are on the wrong product, not the wrong settings.
What you need before you start
- A Prime Futures Challenge or funded account. Classic Futures does not include NinjaTrader.
- The username and password The Trading Pit issued you by email. These are not your client area login.
- The data feed agreement signed off in your Trading Pit dashboard. Nothing works until it is.
- NinjaTrader Desktop (NinjaTrader 8) on Windows.
Connecting The Trading Pit to NinjaTrader
Check you are on a Prime Futures account
Worth thirty seconds before you download anything. Classic Futures Challenges give you R|Trader, ATAS, Quantower and Volsys. Tradovate, NinjaTrader and TradingView are additions to the Prime tier. The Trading Pit’s CFD challenges are a separate product again, on their own platforms, and none of this applies to them.
Sign the data feed agreement in your dashboard
Log in to your Trading Pit dashboard. A notification sits in the top right corner prompting you to sign the data feed agreement, with a Sign Now button. Click it.
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that cannot be worked around later from inside NinjaTrader. Signing it is what carries you through to Tradovate.
Log in to Tradovate once, in the browser
Signing the agreement drops you at the Tradovate login. Enter the username and password The Trading Pit sent you. Do it before you go near NinjaTrader — the market data agreement has to be settled on the Tradovate side, and the browser is where anything still outstanding gets put in front of you.
Download NinjaTrader Desktop
The desktop platform, on Windows. The browser platform will not do this job.
Enable Multi-Provider
Tools, then Settings, then General. Tick Multi-Provider, apply, and restart NinjaTrader. Without it, Configure does not appear in the Connections menu at all, which is why so many people conclude the platform is broken before they have started.
Add the Tradovate connection
Control Center, Connections, Configure. In the Available list, double-click NinjaTrader. That is the connection type that carries Tradovate prop accounts. Current builds do not list a separate Tradovate entry. Give it a name you will recognise later — The Trading Pit Prime, or similar — because if you ever add a second firm you will want to tell them apart at a glance.
Enter your credentials and set the account type
Type the username and password rather than pasting them. A trailing space picked up from an email is the single most common cause of a login that should work and does not.
Set Account Type to Simulation. This is correct for a Trading Pit evaluation and it stays correct once you are funded — every account The Trading Pit issues is a demo account trading virtual funds in a simulated environment, so Live is never the right choice here. Live is for a retail Tradovate brokerage account, which is a different thing entirely.
Select your new connection
Connections, then the name you gave it.
If it will not connect
- Login failed. Type the credentials instead of pasting, and confirm you are using the ones The Trading Pit emailed rather than your client area login. Note that The Trading Pit will not reset or change a platform password for security reasons — what they will do is re-send the credentials email to your originally registered address, so ask for that rather than a reset.
- No Configure option. Multi-Provider is switched off. See why Configure is missing.
- Connected, but no accounts. Usually the data feed agreement is still unsigned, or the account is not a Prime one. Check the dashboard notification first. See no accounts were found.
- Connected, charts blank. The market data agreement has not been accepted on the Tradovate side. Log in to Tradovate in a browser once and clear whatever it puts in front of you. See connected but no data.
- Prices move, the SuperDOM ladder is empty. That is an entitlement question, not a fault, and it is a separate thing from the data feed agreement above. The Trading Pit documents two futures market data options, Level 1 (top of book) and Level 2 (depth of book), so ask them which one your account carries before you start troubleshooting the platform.
The Trading Pit and NinjaTrader: questions we get
Can I run The Trading Pit next to another prop firm?
Yes, and on the Tradovate route there is nothing to buy to make it happen. Tradovate does not cap how many connections NinjaTrader holds, so a Trading Pit connection and a second Tradovate firm can sit open side by side. The one-connection-at-a-time restriction people run into is specific to NinjaTrader’s Rithmic connections, and it does not apply here.
If what you actually want is one order reaching several accounts at once, that is a separate job from having the connections open, and it is handled by the trade copier.
Is my client area login the same as the platform login?
No. NinjaTrader needs the platform credentials The Trading Pit issued by email, not the username and password you use to log in to their website. The two are easy to confuse because the email arrives around the same time as your account.
Keep that email. Since The Trading Pit cannot reset the password and can only re-send the original credentials, losing it means a support round trip rather than a self-service reset.
I am on a Classic Futures challenge. Can I use NinjaTrader?
Not on that account. The Trading Pit’s platform list for Classic Futures is R|Trader, ATAS, Quantower and Volsys. NinjaTrader arrived as part of the Prime Futures tier and is bundled with Tradovate and TradingView there. If you want NinjaTrader, that is a Prime challenge decision made when you buy, so ask The Trading Pit before you assume an existing account can be moved across.