If you work during the day and only have time to practice at night, Market Replay is the way to go. Market Replay, accessed via NinjaTrader 8’s Playback connection, lets you replay market activity as though it’s occurring live. It’s the next best thing (and in some ways superior) to real-time practice. You can rewind, fastfoward, and pause playback. This makes Market Replay ideal for getting a sense of how your trading signals work in relation to market conditions. For example, many trading systems have signals that appear when a bar closes. During playback, you can see exactly when the signal fires.

Before you can use Market Replay, you must download replay data. Follow the steps in the video to navigate to the correct area in the platform. Next, select the instrument (aka market) and date you want to download. Then you may connect to the Playback Connection. Upon doing so, the Playback window will appear. Playback begins at midnight, so you’ll need to drag the slider or fastforward to market open, if that’s your focus. Keep in mind that every time you move the slider, you have to wait for the data to plot again up until that point.

All trades placed while connected to Playback Connection occur within the Playback101 account rather than Sim101. Sim101 is reserved for real-time NinjaTrader Continuum connections. You should be able to monitor your performance using Playback101 using the same Trade Performance area of NinjaTrader 8 (see the New menu item). Try to use Market Replay data rather than historical data, as the former has Level II data. Some traders like to see the buyers and sellers in the SuperDOM and this is only available with Level II data.