Performance Tips for NinjaTrader & SharkIndicators

The purpose of this page is to list ways that help improve NinjaTrader’s performance and in turn improve BloodHound and BlackBird performance.

NinjaTrader has a detailed page of suggestions here.  Items #1 thru #6 are very important.

CPU speed is critical to NinjaTrader's perfomance.  See the CPU section of the Computer Selection Guide.

MSOD is known to lock various files within the NinjaTrader working directory ( C:\Users\Documents\NinjaTrader 8\ ) and causing crashes and/or performance issues.  It is critical that you exclude the NinjaTrader 8 folder from OneDrive.  See Microsoft documentation for more information.

Common Anti-virus software such as Norton, McAfee, Bitdefender, and Microsoft Security Essentials, that have “Real Time Protection” scanning, are known to slow down NinjaTrader and cause memory issues.  Typically, NinjaTrader can be added to a Whitelist or ‘Exception List’ to prevent Real Time Protection from scanning the NinjaTrader folder and files.  In most cases this will greatly help NinjaTrader run faster.

These instructions for turning off “Real Time Protection” were submitted to us by a customer.  Please contact Norton support for any assistance.

1. Select “Settings” (upper left tab), “Real Time Protection”, “Antivirus and SONAR Exclusions”, and “Items to Exclude from Auto-Protect, SONAR and Download Intelligence Detection”.
2. Select the “Add” drop-down list and then select “Folders”.
3. Navigate to the folders containing your NinjaTrader program files [typically this is C:Program Files (x86)NinjaTrader 7.  Select this folder to add it to the Real Time Exclusions list.
4. Click “Apply” and “OK” to accept the changes.

A customer has found Bitdefender to cause memory issues with NinjaTrader and BloodHound.  Follow this guide, How to add exclusions (exceptions) in Bitdefender 2015, to remove NinjaTrader from being scanned.  Comment: Aug. 2015, It has been reported to us that the Exclusion list does not work, and Bitdefender keeps interfering with NinjaTrader.  The customer had to uninstall Bitdefender.

MSE is known to dramatically slow down NinjaTrader’s performance.  Follow this guide, How to exclude a file/folder from Microsoft Security Essentials scan in Windows, to remove NinjaTrader from being scanned.