With a single license, you may run multiple instances of Investor/RT simultaneously on your PC. And whether you have a Rithmic connection (together with a DTN MA subscription) managed under the R Trader Pro "plugin mode", or you are holding an IQfeed subscription, you will be able to share the same historical and live data stream subscription among several instances of Investor/RT.
Before reviewing how to install, step by step, multiple instances of Investor/RT on the same PC, let's discuss briefly the benefits of running several InvestorR/T instances :
- Maintain dedicated daytrading and homework/development environments. When it comes to creating new experimental charts or running backtests with hundreds of millions of tick data, most of our users will separate their development work from their dedicated day trading and execution instance. You can then easily, for example, include your newly developed charts from your development instance to your day trading instance thanks to the easy export/import process of IRT objects (Charts, Quotepage)
- Separate your market monitoring from your day trading execution environment. You enjoy monitoring 30 or 50 futures markets : why not create a dedicated instance for this market screening activity, which may become somewhat demanding, tick data reception and processing wise, during news release and other fast market conditions. It might also make sense to dedicate a separate Investor/RT instance for CPU intensive duties such as running multiple the Trail of Intentions RTX used to display historical market depth and analyze in real time the order book events
- Trade simultaneously multiple accounts from different instances. This might be very useful if you have accounts with 2 different prop firms, ie you could connect separate instances to each account. Or you may want to set up a dedicated instance of Investor/RT to manage your longer-term InteractiveBrokers stocks portfolio, while daytrading (with Rithmic) your broker futures account from a separate instance
Step by step installation procedure of a second Investor/RT instance (version 15 and beyond)
Step 1 : We assume you have installed so far only one instance of I/RT. You might have noticed that the components of this primary instance were typically installed on 2 locations :
C:\Program Files\LinnSoft\InvestorRT is the location of the main program while C:\Users\UserName\InvestorRT contains the user database
More specifically, the C:\Users\UserName\InvestorRT/Archives directory will store the database archive files. If you are not familiar with the manual or automatic process of creating such "restore point" archives, this is a good time to review this webpage
Shutdown Investor/RT and make sure you (or Investor/RT) have created recently the database image you want to use as a starting point for this second instance. You would typically want to revert to a database image that does include your historical tick database, as each instance to be installed will be completely "independent" and won't share any common settings data or settings.
Step 2 : Go to C:\Program Files\LinnSoft , select the InvestorRT directory
With a right click, copy and paste the full directory at the top level of your main C drive. Rename it with a name such as IRT_01 : this name has to be short due to some internal limitations on file path name length
Step 3 : Go to the C: \IRT_01 directory and create a new directory to be named “instance” : this directory will act as a flag to tell Investor/RT to run everything from this folder, i.e. instead of being installed in 2 separate directories (as this is the case for the primary instances), all software components will be located inside the IRT_01 directory.
Step 4 : Select the investorRT.exe file inside the IRT_01 directory and, with a right click, create a new shortcut with the "Send to > Desktop (create shortcut)" menu. Rename the desktop shortcut as IRT_01 (or any other name : exact name doesn't matter)
Step 5 : Start your new instance of Investor/RT with this new shortcut
I/RT will then redirect you to the current "archive" folder of your primary instance (that contains the latest database backup or restore point file)
Select the corresponding dba archive file and click OK when I/RT prompts you to revert the second instance database to the selected restore point.
I/RT will then restart with the exact mirror image of your current instance. Here are some additional tips :
How to install a third instance ?
The process will be even more simple : you just create a copy of the “IRT_01” directory onto the main C main drive and rename it as C\:IRT_02
Create a new short cut and you have a third operational instance of Investor/RT
How to distinguish each Instance when running them simultaneously?
The name of the installation directory will show up at the top left corner of the main Investor/RT window
