Check Lag, then the three culprits: Net / Jit / Loss (your internet), Feed / Tick (the feed), UI / NT-CPU (NinjaTrader). The box that turns red points at the cause. On a quiet contract Lag can climb simply because no tick has arrived, so cross-check Tick.
Target the red box: go wired if it is your internet, reconnect if it is the feed, or cut charts and indicators if it is NinjaTrader.
UI climbing red means this chart window is struggling to respond. NT-CPU is spread over every core of your PC, so it usually stays well below its red level while that happens; if it climbs too, NinjaTrader is overloaded by too many charts, indicators or drawings.
Lighten the load: fewer charts, indicators and drawings, and fewer days of history. If NT-RAM is also high, restart NinjaTrader.
Feed turns red when data drops, Route when your broker link drops, and Drops counts each one. Net / Loss tells you whether it was your own internet.
Reconnect in the Control Center. If it is your internet, go wired and restart your router; if it is the provider, check their status page.
Tick climbs to red STALE while UI stays green: the feed stopped sending ticks. It looks like a freeze, but it is a data problem.
First check the market is actually trading: a stale tick outside session hours is normal, not a fault. If it is trading, reconnect your data feed.
Route shows whether your order connection is up, and Rej counts rejections today. A red Route means the link is down; a climbing Rej means orders are bouncing back.
Reconnect your broker if Route is down. For rejections, the reason is on the order in the Control Center’s Orders tab and in its Log tab: usually margin, order size or an invalid price.
The dangerous one: Feed stays green and charts keep updating, but Route reads Acct lost. Your live account was connected and is now gone, so orders will not reach the exchange. Depending on how your broker reports the drop, Route reads Acct lost or 1/1 down.
Stop trading and reconnect the broker in the Control Center. Confirm open positions and working orders with your broker before resuming; do not assume a stop is still live.
With no real account connected, Route falls back to your Simulator account and says Sim, in plain white rather than green. Easy to miss after a restart: trades fill perfectly and count for nothing. It cannot see which account your order entry has selected: with the broker connected, Route is green even if Chart Trader is still on Sim101.
Connect your broker in the Control Center, then check the account selector on your order entry before the first trade of the day.
NT-RAM creeping up over a long Uptime means memory has built up over the session, and a restart clears it.
Restart NinjaTrader between sessions. Running fewer charts and indicators slows how fast it builds back up.
Jit and Loss flickering red point to an unstable connection, classic Wi-Fi. If NT-CPU spikes instead, it is NinjaTrader itself, not your line.
Swap Wi-Fi for a wired cable, the single biggest fix for jitter. For NT-CPU spikes, cut charts and indicators, or move to a trading VPS.
NT-CPU is NinjaTrader’s share of the whole PC, every core counted. A red UI with a low NT-CPU means one chart window is choking on a single core, or something else on the machine is starving it. A low NT-CPU does not clear NinjaTrader.
Open Task Manager. If nothing else is heavy, lighten that chart window: fewer indicators and drawings, less history. Otherwise close the browser, recorder, cloud sync or scan that is eating the machine.
Drops counts every connection drop since midnight, so a drop while you were away from the screen is still on the board when you get back, even though everything reads green again.
Glance at Drops after any break. If it moved, check your fills, working orders and positions for that window.
Lag compares the time stamped on each tick with your PC clock. If NinjaTrader’s time zone setting has been changed from System Default, that comparison cannot be trusted, so Lag shows a gray dash instead of inventing a number. Tick keeps working.
Set Tools → Options → General → Time zone back to System Default and make sure your PC clock updates automatically. Or keep your chart time zone and switch the Lag box off; every other box is unaffected.
Not every red box is a fault. With the feed left connected overnight or over a weekend, Tick goes red simply because nothing is trading, so there are no ticks to receive.
Check the session before troubleshooting. If the market is closed, it is expected. Red during your session with Feed green is a real data problem: reconnect.
Feed shows your connection’s own name (Live above), or a count if you run more than one. The internet boxes read your connection, not the broker’s server, and NT-CPU and NT-RAM are NinjaTrader’s own usage. SystemHUD does not fix any of this for you; it tells you exactly where to look.
In short: NinjaTrader 8 and one chart window. That is all SystemHUD needs.
One set of boxes per chart window: Lag, Tick and UI read the chart you added it to; the other ten are platform-wide.
Chart lag, last tick, UI and ping in real numbers. Green is good, amber a warning, red bad.
Data feed, order routing, connection and platform, together in one row of your chart header.
See which side is slow before you restart the wrong thing.
Every box on or off, three label styles, your colors, size, border, corners and opacity.
You might ask why this is free, and what the catch is. There is none. We want to change the market for third-party NinjaTrader tools, and giving our work away is part of how we do it.
To say it plainly, this market is overpriced and full of low-quality tools with missing features and bugs. Vendors charge hundreds of dollars for simple indicators. No indicator, add-on or tool will make you profitable. A good one makes your trading environment better, and you know that already, or you would not be here looking.
Our goal is the highest-quality products we can build, tools that make a real difference on the chart. We get there by testing hard, on live charts before every release, with feedback from the traders who use them and a close read of what the forums complain about. We offer a full refund within 14 days, we adapt tools for customers who ask, and we give most of our work away.
Most of our tools are free for a reason. We want you to try them, see the quality and the features for yourself, and not spend a dollar with us until you think a tool deserves it. We are a business and we intend to make money, by solving real problems for traders.
So yes, SystemHUD is completely free, no strings attached. If you like it, there are more free tools and paid ones priced well under what is usual in this market. If you have any questions, please email us at support@usefulindicators.com.
No card, no license key, no expiry. Nothing to cancel because nothing was started.
Download freeYour download is on your order page right after checkout.
Four ways traders use the health bar. None of them is a trade signal: SystemHUD knows nothing about the market, only about your platform, your feed and your connection.
One look confirms the feed is live, the broker link is up and the line is clean, instead of finding out on your first order.
Price has not moved in a while. The Last tick box tells you straight away whether the market is quiet or your feed has stalled.
Charts feel laggy. Internet reads clean but chart lag is climbing, so it is not your connection, and you can stop restarting the router.
Two drops and a rejection on the board tell you the session was rough on the infrastructure side, useful context when you review the day.
Not sure why your chart lags? Read the full guide →
Can’t find the answer to your question? Email us, we answer fast.
Download the zip, then in NinjaTrader 8 go to Tools → Import → NinjaScript Add-On and pick the file. Add SystemHUD to a chart from the Indicators list. The boxes appear in that chart window’s toolbar at the top, not on the chart itself. The step-by-step guide covers every message NinjaTrader can show and the update rule.
Genuinely free — no trial period, no locked settings, no license key, nothing to upgrade to. We sell other indicators; free tools like this one are how we show you the quality of the work first.
Data feed: Feed (is the connection up), Lag (how far behind real time the data is) and Tick (time since the last price update). Orders: Route (your broker or order connection, tracked separately from data) and Rej (orders rejected today). Connection: Net, Jit and Loss (a real ping to a public server every 5 seconds) and Drops (connection drops today). Platform: UI (how quickly this chart window responds), NT-CPU and NT-RAM (NinjaTrader’s own usage) and Up (how long NinjaTrader has been running). Each box can be switched off.
Green is healthy, amber is worth watching, red is a problem. Ten of the thirteen metrics have their own warning and critical level you can set; the defaults are, for example, Lag 0.5 and 2 seconds, Tick 5 and 30 seconds, UI 100 and 1,000 ms, NT-CPU 80 and 95%, NT-RAM 2,500 and 4,000 MB, Net 60 and 120 ms, Jitter 15 and 40 ms, Loss 5 and 10%, Rejections and Drops 1 and 6. White means no judgment (uptime, or a zero count), and a gray dash means it cannot be measured right now. The four colors are yours to pick, or switch color coding off.
Because it will not show a number it cannot trust. Net, Jit and Loss show a dash when your network blocks ping (you can change the ping host in the settings); Loss needs at least 5 pings first, and Net shows a dash for one cycle whenever a single ping gets no reply. Lag can show a dash when NinjaTrader’s time zone setting has been changed from System Default. NT-CPU needs two samples, so it fills in after a second. If the update loop itself ever stalls, every box goes to a dash instead of leaving old values looking live.
On purpose. While your data connection is up and no data arrives, both stay red, because a silently stalled feed must never look calm. Leave NinjaTrader connected over a weekend and your data really is old. If the connection itself is down, they go neutral and the Feed box carries the alarm.
It sends a standard ping to a public server, 1.1.1.1 by default, about every 5 seconds to measure your internet. The ping carries no personal or trading data, it is the only thing SystemHUD sends, and you can change the host. Today’s rejection and drop counts are saved in a small file on your own PC so they survive a restart; they reset at midnight on your PC clock.
Forty-eight settings in eight groups, and the six things they add up to. The names in bold are the names in the indicator’s settings window.
Chart lag (Lag) shows how far behind real time your incoming data is, green under half a second and red from two. Last tick (Tick) times the gap since the last price update on your own PC clock, so a stalled feed never passes for a quiet market. Data feed (Feed) is green while the data connection is up, gray if you never connected, red once it drops.
Order routing (Route) watches the broker connection apart from the data, because a chart can look perfect while no order can be placed: green for a live broker, Sim when only the Simulator is connected, No acct without an account, red when a live account drops. Rejections today (Rej) counts the orders your broker turned down today, from margin to a prop-firm rule.
Internet ping (Net) sends a real ping to the Ping host, 1.1.1.1 by default, every 5 seconds. Internet jitter (Jit) is how much that time jumps around, Internet loss (Loss) the share of pings with no reply over up to 20 pings, and Connection drops today (Drops) counts every time the data or broker connection fell away. Your side of the line, measured.
UI responsiveness (UI) times how fast this chart window answers, and it tends to climb before a freeze while CPU still looks calm. NT8 CPU (NT-CPU) and NT8 RAM (NT-RAM) show what NinjaTrader itself is using; memory that creeps up day after day is the cue to restart. NinjaTrader uptime (Up) says how long the platform has been running this session.
Ten of the 13 readings have warning and critical levels in the Values group, such as Lag warning at 0.5 and Lag critical at 2 seconds, Last tick critical at 30 seconds, UI critical at 1,000 ms, NT-CPU warning at 80% and Net ping warning at 60 ms. Below a warning a box is green, from it amber, from critical red, and Tick reads STALE; Rej and Drops stay white at zero.
Good color, OK / warning color, Bad / critical color and Neutral text color are yours, for red-green colorblindness or your chart theme, and Color on values switches the judging off. Box info reads “Lag 154 ms”, just “154 ms”, or “Chart lag 154 ms”; Button size is Small, Medium or Large, Corner rounding Sharp, Rounded or Pill, all set once and saved with the chart.
No. It is a display only: it never places, changes or cancels an order and never reconnects anything. It tells you where the problem is; what to do about it is yours.
One set of boxes serves the whole chart window, so a second copy in another tab stays quiet on purpose. Lag, Tick and UI describe the chart you added SystemHUD to, even when you switch to another tab in that window; the other ten boxes are platform-wide. Add it to the chart you want Lag and Tick to follow.
No. All windows share one measuring engine that updates once a second, and each box only redraws its own small piece of the toolbar. If your chart ever lags with it on, email us: that’s a bug, not normal.
Yes. The Lag box is exactly that: how far behind real time your incoming data is, colored green, amber or red against levels you set. Next to it, Tick tells a stalled feed from a quiet market, and the ping, jitter and loss boxes show whether the delay starts on your internet or further along. The chart lag guide walks through that diagnosis step by step.
Not for your own line or your own PC. The Control Center shows whether each connection is up, the NinjaScript Utilization Monitor shows how much load your scripts put on the platform, and the Market Analyzer has a Time last tick column that reveals a stalled feed. None of them reads ping, jitter, packet loss, CPU or memory, and none of them sits in the chart window you are watching when it matters.
SystemHUD cannot stop a drop, but it shows where one started. Drops counts every drop today, one per connection even when a blip takes down both its data and its orders, and it survives a same-day restart. If Loss climbs while Net and Jit drop to a dash, the trouble began on your own internet; if they stay clean while Feed or Route goes red, the break was between NinjaTrader and your data provider or broker.
Yes, so keep the Windows clock synced. Lag compares each tick’s time stamp with your PC clock, so a clock running a few seconds fast adds that much lag, and a slow clock does the opposite and hides some. Once the clock is more than a second behind the data, or more than an hour ahead of it, Lag shows a dash instead of a number, and Tick keeps working because it only times arrivals on your own clock.
Email support, answered by the traders who built it. Bugs get fixed — this tool gets the same updates and support as our paid indicators.
Free, no card, no license key. Download it, import it, and the health bar is in your chart header in under a minute.
Not for you if you want a tool that fixes a bad connection. SystemHUD shows what is happening; the reconnect, and the trade, are yours.
Pairs well with News indicator and economic calendar (Futures News Indicator) · Free chart notes add-on (StickyNotes) · Free chart watermark indicator (ChartWatermark) · Current price line indicator (CurrentPriceLine)
Tell us what you want to see on the chart. You get a fixed price and a written plan before any work starts.
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