Connect KGI to MultiCharts: Account, API and Test Order

Contents

1. Does KGI Futures support MultiCharts?
2. Which account does KGI MultiCharts need, and who do you apply to?
3. What is the difference between the KGI API and a MultiCharts connection?
4. How do you set up orders once MultiCharts is connected to KGI?
5. How do you place a first test order, and what do you ask about commissions?
6. What should you check in the backtest before moving a strategy to MultiCharts?
7. What are the alternatives if your account does not qualify?
8. Frequently asked questions
9. References

Does KGI Futures support MultiCharts?

You can connect MultiCharts to KGI. KGI Futures offers a MultiCharts connection plan. You need a KGI Futures account first. Ask your account rep to enable MultiCharts and the related permissions, then set up KGI's quote source and order channel separately in MultiCharts. Connecting is the last step of the process. Check commissions, slippage and your backtest numbers first, or the connection means little.

MultiCharts is charting and strategy-trading software. You write a strategy in PowerLanguage, and MultiCharts sends orders to the futures broker automatically based on live quotes. In Taiwan, you usually get MultiCharts through a plan from your futures broker. The broker connects its own quote and order systems to MultiCharts, and you only enter your account number on a settings page. KGI Futures is one of the brokers that offers such a plan.

Think of it as hooking up a printer. You need a computer (the futures account), a driver (the permissions your account rep enables), a signal cable (the quote connection) and the cable that actually feeds the paper (the order connection). Without any one of the four, the printer lights up but no paper comes out. This article follows that order: account, permissions, connections, test order, then what to check in your backtest and what to do if you do not qualify.

Which account does KGI MultiCharts need, and who do you apply to?

You need a KGI Futures account. A KGI Securities stock account is not enough, and both MultiCharts and API access are enabled through your futures account rep. A futures account trades futures and options. It is managed and funded separately from a securities account. Even if you already have an account at KGI Securities, you must open a futures account separately.

1. Open a KGI Futures account. You can open it online or in person. You sign the electronic trading consent forms at the same time. Without them, no program or software can send orders for you.
2. Confirm the program-trading paperwork is signed. Before enabling automated orders, a futures broker usually asks you to sign a program-trading statement or consent form. Ask your rep which one your account is still missing, and complete everything in one trip.
3. Ask your rep to enable MultiCharts. Ask three things at the same time: is there a usage fee, are there trading-volume or other conditions, and how many business days activation takes. Terms differ by broker. Go by what your rep tells you, not by what other people say online.
4. If you need to write your own code, apply for the KGI API too. You can apply for the two separately or together. The next section explains the difference.
5. Once you have your connection login and the installation instructions, move on to the MultiCharts settings.

Why ask about fees and conditions first? They become part of your strategy's trading costs. A plan with a fixed monthly fee puts very different pressure on a swing strategy that trades a few times a month and on a day-trading strategy that trades several times a day. Convert these fees into a cost per trade, then enter them in the backtest's cost fields. That is how you find out whether the strategy can carry them.

What is the difference between the KGI API and a MultiCharts connection?

The KGI API is for people who write code to connect quotes and orders themselves. The MultiCharts connection is a ready-made module: the strategy runs in MultiCharts, and you write no connection code. An API (application programming interface) is a set of specifications that lets a program you write request quotes from KGI's systems, send orders and check positions. Trading through it means you write everything yourself: quote handling, signal logic, order sending, fill reports and reconnecting after a disconnect.

The MultiCharts connection module is code that the futures broker (or the MultiCharts developer) has already written. It translates KGI's quote and order systems into a format MultiCharts understands. Your job is to enter your account on the settings page, pick the instrument and set the session. You write the strategy logic in PowerLanguage inside MultiCharts. The two routes compare as follows:

Item	KGI API	MultiCharts connection
Coding required	Yes, and you handle the connection, fill reports and errors yourself	No. You write the strategy in PowerLanguage and the module handles the connection
Quotes and orders	You connect to the API and manage order status yourself	The connection module handles them, and MultiCharts shows the reports
Strategy execution	Runs inside your own program; you handle scheduling and monitoring	Runs on a MultiCharts chart and executes as long as the chart is open
Setup effort	Long up front: you can use it only after writing and testing it	Short up front: enter your account, match the instrument, set the session
Best for	Traders who can code and want full control of the process	Traders who trade from charts and signals and want to spend their time on strategy

Which should you choose? Ask yourself one question: are you willing to write code for disconnects and reconnects, rejected orders and partial fills? If yes, take the API for maximum flexibility. If no, take MultiCharts and let the software handle them. You can also use both. For example, the strategy runs in MultiCharts, and a small API program checks your position every minute for monitoring. If you are still weighing other no-code platforms, see this full comparison of no-code automated trading platforms.

How do you set up orders once MultiCharts is connected to KGI?

Set things up in a fixed order: quote source, order channel, instrument mapping, session, strategy properties. When the order is wrong, the most common symptom is “quotes show, but the strategy sends no orders.” Each step answers one question: where the data comes from, where orders go, which contract they go to, when they may be sent, and what fill assumptions apply.

1. Set the quote source. In MultiCharts' data source settings, add the KGI quote connection and enter the login your account rep gave you. After it connects, open a chart and confirm that quotes tick. Many people stop here and think setup is done.
2. Set the order channel. This is a separate setting. Add the KGI order connection under the broker settings. Without this step, the strategy's buy and sell signals are only drawn on the chart and never become orders.
3. Instrument mapping. Backtests usually use continuous contract data, but orders must go to one specific contract month. In the mapping table, point the chart instrument to the month you actually want to trade, and remember to change it before the contract month change. If the mapping is wrong, orders go to a contract you did not intend to trade, or are rejected.
4. Session. Set the chart's session to the session you actually trade. If you want to trade only the day session, do not let night-session bars into the strategy. Otherwise the strategy will send orders at times you do not want to trade.
5. Strategy properties. Open the strategy properties and confirm three things: fills on the next bar, commission entered, slippage entered. “Fill on the next bar” means the strategy decides at this bar's close, and the order is sent and filled at the next bar's open. This matches the time gap in live trading. Filling at the same bar's close uses a price you could not get at that moment.

The fill assumptions and cost settings in step five decide whether your MultiCharts backtest lands far from the same strategy calculated in another tool. If you generate the strategy in another tool and then bring it into MultiCharts, how to import a strategy into MultiCharts and match the backtest explains which settings must be the same on both sides.

How do you place a first test order, and what do you ask about commissions?

For the first test order, manually place one market order for one mini or micro contract during a liquid session. Confirm that the fill report, the position and the exit are all correct. Then ask about commissions and work out your costs. The test order is not meant to make money. It walks the whole path of connection, order, fill report, position and exit, so you can confirm that every stop lines up.

1. Pick a session. Choose the normal day-session hours and avoid the first few minutes after the open and the last few minutes before the close. At TAIFEX, TAIEX futures and Mini-TAIEX futures trade the day session from 08:45 to 13:45 and the night session from 15:00 to 05:00 the next day. The exchange may change sessions and contract specifications, so check the TAIFEX contract specifications page before you start. To convert each exchange's sessions to Taiwan time, use the futures market hours checker.
2. Send one market order. Use MultiCharts' manual order panel, not the strategy, so you first confirm that manual orders work.
3. Check the fill report. Look at four fields: fill price, quantity, direction and timestamp. The fill price should be near the bid and ask at the time, the quantity should be 1 and the direction should be the one you sent.
4. Check the position window. MultiCharts shows 1 contract. Open KGI's own order software or app at the same time and confirm it shows the same contract. If the two sides disagree, the instrument mapping or the account setup has a problem.
5. Send the exit order and confirm the position returns to zero. The test order is complete only when both sides show zero.

Ask three things about commissions: how many New Taiwan dollars (NT$) the commission is per contract per side, whether the quote includes the futures transaction tax, and whether MultiCharts or the API carries any extra usage fee. The futures transaction tax on stock index futures is 2 per 100,000 of contract value, charged once on the buy and once on the sell. Futures broker commissions are negotiated and have no official price, so the number your account rep gives you is your number.

Once you have the numbers, convert them into a “round-trip cost per trade” and enter it in the backtest. The round-trip cost is everything you pay from entry to exit: commission on both sides, futures transaction tax on both sides, plus slippage on both sides. Slippage is the gap between the price you expect and the price you actually get. For a market order, count at least one tick. Trading costs in backtests: commission, slippage and the average trade explains why costs belong in the strategy search from the start, not added at the end.

You can check the contract value and the value of one tick with the futures contract and profit calculator. Then split the round-trip cost you calculate into a commission field and a slippage field, and enter them in the MultiCharts strategy properties and in the tool that generates your strategies. Enter the same numbers on both sides, so the backtest results have a basis for comparison.

What should you check in the backtest before moving a strategy to MultiCharts?

Before going live, find three numbers in the backtest report: net profit, maximum drawdown and average trade. Then compare the average trade with the round-trip cost you worked out in the previous section. Connecting is only the last step. If these three numbers cannot carry the costs, a smooth connection just pays those costs faster.

Maximum drawdown is the largest drop of the equity curve, in dollars, from a high to the lowest point after it. It decides how much money your account needs so you are not forced to stop partway through. Average trade is net profit divided by the number of trades. The formula is a single line:

Average trade = net profit ÷ number of trades

Net profit here is total profit and loss after commission and slippage, and the number of trades counts closed entry-and-exit pairs. The larger the average trade, and the higher its multiple of the round-trip cost, the less likely the strategy is to flip to a loss when your cost estimate is slightly off. Below is a real backtest run by AlphaPrime (Valynox) to show how to read a report. It tests NQ (E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures) on daily bars, 2019-01-02 to 2025-06-30, long and short, 1 contract at a time. The only entry and exit condition is the Stochastic oscillator, with no stop loss, no profit target and no filter. It is a stand-in rule built from a standard indicator, not KGI or MultiCharts itself.

This result is the one AlphaPrime's search kept out of 1,024 candidates, based on return relative to drawdown. Pick the best one after the fact and the numbers will always look better than what you could really get. That is selection bias. Bailey et al. (2014) show that the more variants you try, the more likely the best backtest is overestimated. So do not read the $49,380 net profit as “this rule earned this much,” and do not expect to get this result in your own trading. Read the relationships between the numbers.

How do you read it? First, net profit of $49,380 against a maximum drawdown of $32,935 means that over six and a half years the account fell from a high by an amount close to two-thirds of total profit. Your account size has to be able to take that depth. Second, the average trade of $796.45 is after a $30 cost on each trade. The multiple is large enough that a slightly wrong cost estimate will not turn it negative right away, but 62 trades is a very small sample, and a few large trades can swing the average. Third, time in market of 11.44% means capital sat idle most of the time, and a profit factor of 1.374 (gross profit divided by gross loss) means about 1.37 earned for every 1 lost. You should go through all of this before putting a strategy into MultiCharts. The PowerLanguage comparison checklist for moving a generated strategy to MultiCharts lists the full sequence, from the generating tool to MultiCharts, and which numbers to compare on both sides.

What are the alternatives if your account does not qualify?

MultiCharts is not the only way out. The same strategy can be exported as code for other platforms, so pick a route based on the accounts you can open and the platforms your broker supports. If KGI's MultiCharts plan has conditions you cannot meet yet, or your main account is at another broker, look at the table below first, then decide where to send the strategy.

Platform	Export language	Account or broker support needed
MultiCharts	PowerLanguage	A MultiCharts plan from a Taiwan futures broker (such as KGI in this article), or a broker that supports connections to a MultiCharts license you obtain yourself
TradingView	Pine Script v6	A TradingView account; to send orders automatically you also need a broker integrated with TradingView
TradeStation	EasyLanguage	An overseas TradeStation account
NinjaTrader	NinjaScript	An account with an overseas futures broker that supports NinjaTrader connections
MetaTrader 4	MQL4	An account with a broker that offers the MetaTrader 4 platform
MetaTrader 5	MQL5	An account with a broker that offers the MetaTrader 5 platform

Think about the order in reverse: not “which platform do I want,” but “which account can I open, which platform does it support, and what code does that platform take.” For Taiwan futures, MultiCharts through a Taiwan futures broker is the most direct route. For US futures such as ES and NQ, an overseas TradeStation or NinjaTrader account is a common choice. TradingView suits looking at signals first and deciding later whether to connect a broker. The same strategy will differ across platforms because of fill assumptions, sessions and data details, so after you switch platforms, redo the cost settings and the test order. Once the strategy rules are settled, AlphaPrime can export them as code for each of the six platforms in the table above. The list of supported export platforms shows the language for each one.

The next step is concrete: open your current backtest report, work out a multiple with “average trade ÷ round-trip cost,” then check the table above and circle the accounts you can open today. If the multiple is big enough and an account fits, go ask your account rep to enable it. If the multiple is too small, adjust the strategy first. The connection can wait.

Frequently asked questions

Does KGI Futures support MultiCharts?

Yes. KGI Futures offers a MultiCharts connection plan. You need a KGI Futures account first, then apply to your account rep for activation and set up KGI's quote source and order channel in MultiCharts. Activation terms and fees depend on what your rep tells you, and they differ by futures broker.

How much is the KGI MultiCharts commission?

Futures commissions are negotiated and have no official price. Ask your account rep directly for the NT$ amount per contract per side, and confirm whether the quote includes the futures transaction tax and whether MultiCharts carries any extra usage fee. The futures transaction tax on stock index futures is 2 per 100,000 of contract value, charged on both the buy and the sell. Add commission, tax and slippage into a round-trip cost per trade, then enter it in the backtest.

How do you place orders with KGI MultiCharts?

First finish four settings in MultiCharts: quote source, order channel, instrument mapping and session. Then place one market order from the manual order panel as a test. Check the fill report's price, quantity, direction and timestamp, and confirm that MultiCharts and KGI's own order software show the same position. Once both are back to zero after the exit, let the strategy send orders automatically.

Can I use the KGI API and MultiCharts at the same time?

Yes. You can apply for them separately or have both enabled. A common setup is to run the strategy in MultiCharts and write a small API program to monitor positions and connection status. If both sides send orders to the same account, make one side the owner of position management to avoid duplicate orders.

References

• Taiwan Futures Exchange. Mini-TAIEX Futures. https://www.taifex.com.tw/enl/eng2/mTX
• CME Group. E-mini Nasdaq-100 Futures Contract Specs. https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/equities/nasdaq/e-mini-nasdaq-100.contractSpecs.html
• Bailey, D. H., Borwein, J., López de Prado, M., & Zhu, Q. J. (2014). Pseudo-Mathematics and Financial Charlatanism: The Effects of Backtest Overfitting on Out-of-Sample Performance. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 61(5), 458–471.