We received this question from a user of Investor/RT and Rithmic Order Routing. The answer below is generally applicable to other supported order routing systems (CQG, Gain, etc.)

Question:

If I prefer to use another Rithmic execution platform to place my trades is there a setting in Investor/RT to prevent me from accidentally executing a trade from my Investor/RT charts?

Answer:

First of all, Investor/RT has a specially named quotepage, the Trading List quotepage. The software is designed so that trading orders may not be sent unless the symbol of the trading order belongs to the Trading List quotepage. So the short answer to your question is yes, simply delete the Trading List quotepage or ensure that it is empty. You can open this quotepage from the Object Manager and then eliminate any or all rows (symbols) you see there.

Another way to do this is to use the Data menu to Stop Data, i.e. disconnect from Rithmic. Then use Data > Setup Rithmic and in the list of accounts you see there, choose Simulated, and click OK to apply the change. This has the effect of I/RT using Rithmic market data but any trading you do from I/RT charts is handled internally by the built-in trading simulator. The account named Simulated is the name we use for the account in this simulator.

The downside of using Simulated is that I/RT will then focus on internal simulated trading orders and will not participate with your actual Rithmic trading in any way. You will not see Rithmic order fills in your charts, nor working orders for example. So the first method of clearing the Trading List quotepage is the recommended method since you then can see fills and working orders in your charts from your actual trading; trading activity will not be initiated by Investor/RT the symbol belongs to the Trading List. You can also connect to one of Rithmic's Paper Trading systems and paper trade with Investor/RT execution features. You must set the trading account to the Rithmic account to do this.

For Investor/RT users who want to use the Simulated account at some times and a broker account at other times, we have a chart button type to facilitate this. Simply add a button to any chart, set the purpose to Set Trading Account. Make it a menu button and put the single character ? as the account name. This menu button, when clicked, will present a popup menu of your live trading account name(s) and Simulated as choices. You can click it any time to engage Rithmic trading or Simulated. The ChartTradingDOM in RT is designed to show you when your live vs simulated account is in play and it color codes its presentation accordingly at the bottom of the DOM beneath the trading buttons there.

Finally, the InvestorRT ChartTradingDOM by default is setup to prompt for confirmation before any trading orders are sent. If you create manual  trading trading orders of your own for use with custom trading bottoms, those order setups can similarly be setup to prompt for confirmation. When the confirmation prompt appears you can click Cancel or hit the esc key on the keyboard to dismiss the prompt and prevent the order from being processed further. So with confirmation turned on and the Trading List quotepage empty, there are two layers that can block an accidental trading order from being sent to the broker.

For further assurance of whether a Rithmic account or the Simulated account is in play, you can add an Annotation indicator to your chart with the text of the annotation set to %ACCOUNT. This textual note can be positioned anywhere you like in the chart; it will show the name of the present account in whatever font, size, and color you setup.