Confusion between your NinjaTrader account and your broker account in NinjaTrader 8

What is causing it

There are at least two, often three, separate accounts: your NinjaTrader platform account, your brokerage account, and sometimes a separate market data provider account. They usually have different credentials.

Why this happens

NinjaTrader sells the software, but it is not necessarily your broker and often is not your data source. Each of those parties has its own account system, its own password rules and its own support desk.

This split is also why support requests get bounced around. Only the party that issued a credential can reset it or check why it was rejected.

The fix, step by step

1. Treat your NinjaTrader account as the one that owns your licence and any purchases. It is used on the NinjaTrader website and inside the platform for licensing, and it is not used to connect to data.
2. Treat your brokerage account as the one that holds money and executes trades. Its credentials go into the connection settings.
3. If your data comes from a separate provider such as Rithmic, CQG or Kinetick, those credentials are separate again, and they may have been issued by your broker rather than chosen by you.
4. When a login is rejected, work out which of the three you are being asked for before retrying, since repeated attempts can lock a provider account.
5. Keep the three sets of credentials recorded separately in a password manager, labelled by what they connect to.

How to confirm it is fixed

You can log in to the NinjaTrader website with one set of details, connect the platform to your broker with another, and neither is a substitute for the other.

Stopping it happening again

Label the credentials by function, not by the word NinjaTrader. For example, store them as platform licence, broker routing and data feed.