If your computer clock is off by mere seconds, you could experience unwanted behavior in your NinjaTrader 8 trading platform. The NinjaTrader 8 software “grabs” the current time from your computer clock. In turn, the indicators running within NinjaTrader reference that time or schedule operations accordingly. For example, if the Bar Timer indicator is running on a computer with an incorrect Windows 10, the Bar Timer may fail to countdown and could remain at zero.

In an ideal situation, your Windows 7, 8, or 10 version should automatically recalibrate (sync) with official time servers on a regular basis. This is supposed to be done by the operating system automatically every once in a while to correct any “drift” in time caused by, well, physics essentially as related to the battery on your computer’s motherboard. The official time servers are maintained to ensure great precision. You can check how “off” your computer clock is with the official time via https://time.is. Note that this is not an official time server, though it is frequently used to gauge computer clock accuracy. When time.is recognized your time is pretty much exact, it will tell you so.

Fortunately, there is an easy fix to the Windows time inaccuracy issue. We will go over instructions on how to set up a shortcut you can use every couple of weeks to manually correct/update the time.

1. Right-click the Windows Desktop and select the option to create a new shortcut.
2. For the location, type in timedate.cpl. Make sure there is no trailing period if you copied the text from here. Proceed forward and give the shortcut a name, such as Time Sync.
3. Now that the shortcut is created, you’ll need to perform the remaining steps every two weeks or so to correct time drift. Double-click on the shortcut.
4. Click the Internet Time tab a the top. Then click Change settings.
5. Click Update now. It’s actually normal to see a failure message. When this occurs, select the other time server and try updating again. Repeat among the time servers until success occurs. Upon success, close out of the time area. Wait five minutes for the time to “permeate” the Windows OS.
6. If NinjaTrader is running, restart it.
7. Optionally, visit https://time.is to confirm your computer clock is now accurate.