I was recently researching specific algo bots for crypto and came across an interesting setup on YouTube…  The setup seems pretty popular and does backtest out pretty well so I decided to develop a free crypto bot for NinjaTrader and offer it to the algo community! 

The video that I based the algo bot on is below (Note: we are not affiliated in any way with this organization or content, just providing some backstory as to what the setup is based on). https://youtu.be/xbAQR1e1XY8

The basics for the setup...

1. Add the SSL Channel indicator to a one hour chart … Determine the direction from this (I have included a free NinjaTrader SSL Channel indicator in the download / install). The default settings of “10” are ok for the SSL Channel Period but you can change these in the bot if you desire. 
2. Add an EMA indicator to a smaller timeframe chart (from his video, a 5 minute chart).  For the setup g from this video he is using a 50 EMA, however you can adjust this within the crypto bot strategy to be any EMA you want. 
3. Wait for the price on the 5 minute chart to be below the EMA for long entries, or above for short entries (you can choose to have it crossing or below within crypto bot strategy setup). 
4.  Choose from any bullish or bearish setups for your entry… Within the video he is going with a Engulfing pattern for entry however in the Crypto Bot Strategy you can choose from any of these setups for entry:

a.   Engulfing
b.   Harami
c.   Harami Cross
d.   Belthold
e.   Hammer
f.    Hanging Man
g.   Morning / Evening Star
h.   Rising / Falling Three
i.    Three Soldiers / Crows
j.    Piercing Line
k.   Upside Gap Two Crows
l.    Downside TasukiGap
m.  Dark Cloud Cover

Crypto Bot Strategy (Download Free Below!) 

I ended up adding several features to the strategy which can provide optional settings... 

•  A minute interval for the higher timeframe (default is 60) 
• Change several other inputs such as the SSL Channel period, EMA, and multiple entry inputs. 
• Trailing stop loss 
• Display the upper TF on the lower TF chart (with this you don't really need to ever pull up the upper TF SSL Channel). 
• Highlight unusual volume (either very minimal or significant) on the chart. At the moment this is only part of the indicator and not the strategy... I am open to input on if anyone thinks these variables would be useful for integration within the strategy. 
• Ability to enable the algo bot on startup, or based only after clicking a button after its enabled. Also individual buttons to manually go long, short. 

Order Entry Options

• Optionally only enable long or short entries (or both!)
• Profit target can be a recent high/low, or standard ticks/currency. 
• Stop loss can be trailing or static number of ticks/currency.
• Ability to set stop loss to break even after "X" number of bars.
• Take profit / exit position after "X" number of bars in your direction.
• Exit reverse candlestick pattern - Will exit on any reverse pattern! 

Backtesting - Below is some historical results with ETH... There are also some great results with BTC and others as well.  

The file is a free download however you do need to register with us to receive the file.

DOWNLOAD CRYPTO BOT STRATEGY FOR NINJATRADER (FREE BOT!)

Hope this is useful for anyone! Please post comments and any feedback!

-Chad

NinjaTrader strategy analyzer has many features that you don't always know until after you have worked within the interface for a while...

Seven quick tips for working with NinjaTrader Strategy Analyzer... 

Epic Tip 1: Whenever you optimize an algo strategy, you can expand the minimum / maximum properties and type in each field, or simply type directly in the textbox. 

It can take some work to go step by step through a strategies properties and setup the minimum and maximum values for optimization... but did you know you can also just type in the textbox within strategy analyzer?

Option 1: Expand the properties settings and manually enter values for minimum, maximum, and the value to increment. 

Option 2: Simply type in the values without expanding. The format is min;max;increment. So to increment values from 50 to 200 in increments of 25 it would look like: 50;200;25

Epic Tip 2: Tick Replay? Maybe not needed with high-fill resolution!

Certain algo strategies (including most Epic Collection strategies!) are coded to take advantage of tick replay, and the strategy results can greatly benefit by enabling this feature. Within NinjaTrader, you can enable the feature under Tools, Options, Market Data, Show Tick Replay. 

This option will then be available within the data series when you are setting up strategies or strategy analyzer.  To learn more about how tick replay works and the advantages for enabling the feature you can check out the NinjaTrader user guide. https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/?tick_replay.htm

Why not always enable tick replay? There is a significant performance impact! Want a better option without the need to have the major performance hit? You can specify the order fill resolution to be set to "High" and choose a value such as every minute or even every second. You might be surprised with how the results are similar to tick replay without the major performance hit. 

Epic Tip 3: Strategy Analyzer Logs.

By default, you might not even know strategy analyzer had logs... and perhaps that's because they shouldn't even be called logs. When I first heard of the strategy analyzer logs I assumed they were referring to log files I might need to send their support team, or perhaps log files that might include errors the strategies have or a reference that I had to open up in notepad etc...  

Well... get ready for a surprise! With all of the work and time that goes into strategy optimization, its a shame when the results just get lost if you don't export or save the results within a template.  This is where strategy logs can be helpful. 

To enable the logs, you right click within the strategy analyzer interface. You will see an option to "show logs". 

Wow! Look mom... I can filter by strategy or by instrument!

Oh... I can also right click within the grid, and open these past historical results within strategy analyzer!

From here you can research all of your past strategies and optimization results... You can "pin" them, and enable features within the "properties" section of Strategy Analyzer to show columns such as the profit factor, or button to view and open the strategy. 

Epic Tip 4: Save templates to move between workstations.

When moving between development and production environments, it can be extremely helpful to save templates. Saving templates within strategy analyzer is easy...  in the bottom right you will see a "Templates" menu item, where you can click it to open, or save templates. These can then be retrieved when you want to go and enable a strategy within the strategies tab of NinjaTrader, or within the strategies interface within NinjaTrader charts. 

So how do you move them from one work station to another? Easy... simply zip up/compress the folders under your templates folder, copy them to the other system, and unzip them.  Typically this directory is here: \Documents\NinjaTrader 8\templates\Strategy folder. 

We provide a full video that covers this process, including how to take advantage of optimized templates we provide for the best NinjaTrader strategies. 

You can check out the video and download templates at http://www.nashtech.xyz/templates.

Epic Tip 5: Sort by your worst trades... Add other indicators to the chart to see if you could have avoided that entry. 

Often times a strategy has great results and trades great except a couple bad apples that really impact the overall results. You can easily find the worst trades, navigate within the chart for those times and sometimes get a better picture for what might be happening. 

For example, many custom strategies we build for clients we often include an overall "max stop loss". This is needed for example if their normal stop loss is set to "last bar high/low", when the previous bar was so parabolic and significant that it really impacted their stop loss. 

First, navigate within Strategy Analyzer by clicking in the upper left dropdownlist, and select "Trades". Next, check out the entry time and exit time within the executions. 

Next, navigate within the "Chart" by selecting that from the dropdownlist. Navigate to that date/time of the entry and see if you can determine anything that would have helped keep you out of that trade? Sometimes this includes adding other indicators on the chart and checking their values. Most of the epic collection of strategies include features to "Opt Out" of trades if the Vortex indicator, choppiness indicator, or ADX indicator are at extreme ranges. 

Oh... and if you are trading with the best NinjaTrader strategies and you find your results are just horrible? Just choose the option for trade direction and change it to "reverse" :) All the strategies within the Epic Collection include the ability to trade in reverse if the setup is optimized so poorly you want to actually trade differently. 

Epic Tip 6: Backtest against multiple instruments at once, use percent and variables such as ticks rather then fixed currency.

If you discover that similar settings for your strategy work across many instruments, consider testing against many instruments at one time. How do you do this? Well first, hopefully your settings are using input variables such as percentages, ticks, pips, etc... When you have fixed currency type variables its harder to backtest against multiple instruments. Next... When you have selected to backtest or optimize within strategy analyzer, choose the instrument and instead of selecting the single instrument, choose "Select All". This is helpful also if you want to enable the strategy on live simulator accounts as it can create the strategy for each instrument rather you manually selecting each and every instrument. The results will spit out per instrument and save you a lot of time! 

Epic Tip 7: Take optimization sloooooowly.

Strategy optimization is powerful... but take when not used properly, it can be a waste of time. For example... what if you forget to select to trade both long and short, and you don't realize this until the optimization takes hours to run? Or after you feel comfortable with the strategy you want to test all different variables and multiple profit targets and stop losses, only to realize when you click run its going to take 70 days to complete! This can easily happen when you define too many variables, too small of increments, etc... Try adjusting the minimum and maximum on just a couple variables to make sure you don't end up with an optimization that takes days to complete! 

Feature: Wait X Bars from Last Exit

Benefits: Avoid continued entry and/or exit, possibly in market conditions that are not suitable for the trading strategy. 

We code a log of NinjaTrader strategies... and we like to provide tips for other developers or traders wanting to create custom strategies for NinjaTrader. 

Sometimes the market doesn't always respond well to your algo strategy... In that situation, you want to avoid entry, often for money management and controlling your trading strategy. We use a special feature within NinjaTrader for this.

We include this feature within all of the Epic NinjaTrader Indicators and strategies but you can reference the same code below:

Within OnStateChange()

BarsRequiredBeforeReEntry = 5;

Within Properties:

[NinjaScriptProperty]
[Display(Name = "Bars Required Before ReEntry", Order = 1, GroupName = "NashTech Order Entry")]
public int BarsRequiredBeforeReEntry
 { get; set; }

Within OnBarUpdate:

 if (BarsSinceExitExecution() != -1)
                {

        BarsSinceExit = BarsSinceExitExecution();
           
                    if (BarsSinceExit < BarsRequiredBeforeReEntry)
                    {
                        if (EnableDebugMode == true)
                        {
                            Print("We should only be here if bars required before re-entry is less than bars since exit");
                            Print("Bars Since Exit Execution:" + BarsSinceExit);
                            Print("Required Before ReEntry:" + BarsRequiredBeforeReEntry);
                            Print("Time of Skipping order:" + Time[0]);
                        }
                    
                        BarBrushes[0] = PendingBrush;

                        return;
                    }

                }

Questions? Leave a comment! 

-Chad

All subscribers and lifetime license users get the latest templates to install based on our weekly optimization results. If there is an instrument you want the most recent template for, just ask! For trial users all templates are about 30 days old.

Often we get requests to help with Ninjascript / NinjaTrader 8 indicators and strategies that do not always fit within our required work for engagement... This does not mean we don't want to be helpful! We always encourage algo trading and want to help novices and customers alike with best practices. We will continue to work on videos but are also planning weekly videos on best practices. 

Within each of our custom NinjaTrader straegies we often include some basic setup configurations... These include:

• Wait X Bars from new trading day
• Wait X Bars from last exit
• Exit after X Bars 
• Setup Stop Loss to Breakeven after X Bars
• Exit after reverse tail (topping / bottoming wick/tail)

Trading crypto futures with NinjaTrader and Epic Bounce strategy. 

Epic Bid, is a strategy which keeps an ongoing bid price for your instrument based on the lowest price of the last “x” bars. You can define optional settings such as price offset (above or below that price). 

 This first video covers only a brief summary of Epic Bid indicator and Epic Bid Strategy for NinjaTrader 8. Please check the blog and comments for upcoming videos on NinjaTrader 8 strategy optimzation and best practices with Epic Bid.

If you don't know how your indicator performs historically... why are you using it?

Hi fellow traders in the trader-hood! 

Just got the new blog setup and wanted to start the first post off related to one of the most critical topics on indicators for thinkorswim or other platforms like Nina Trader.

For the most part all of our indicators are heavily backtested against multiple timeframes and multiple types of trades from stocks to futures etc... We want to get the absolute best results because, well... we trade with them too! The only indicators we don't have backtesting for are the ones simply related to watchlists or for Epic Labels as these are extremely useful when trading but there really isn't a way to backtest against them. 

If you have been looking around for indicators for a while, you know the biggest problem is that there are so many out there, majority are not documented, and even more important so many of them have not been backtested for a strategy to see if the results for buying and selling a stock would really (historically speaking) work as a successful strategy.  

So as we got started with each indicator we wanted to make sure we had the absolute best options for each indicator and backtesting. This is because trading different stocks or futures really require different setups and small changes can extremely give you very different results. 

Below I will cover the same general settings all of our indicators support, with minor tweaks or changes from indicator to indicator for anything specific to that specific functionality. 

thinkorswim backtesting indicator basic settings

• Enable Backtesting - Although you have added the thinkorswim epic indicator as a "Strategy" and not just a study, you still have the ability to enable and disable backtesting. You must first enable the setting to display backtesting. This allows you to use one strategy on your charts without having to add/remove studies and strategies everytime you want to run some backtesting reports. 
• Trade Position: - This is to choose if you want to only show testing and strategy reports for buy/long, sell/short or both. Both is enabled by default. 
• TradeConfirmType - Each of the Epic indicators is a little different, but most of them provide an "early entry" notification option, or a confirmed setup, and then a double confirmation. For example, in the case of Epic Entry this might include ability to see the first higher high after many lower highs as a confirmed setup, however if the bar does not also close above the previous bar then it would be considered a weaker setup. On the other hand, sometimes you you miss out on the best move for the setup because you are entering it late. For this reason we offer multiple setup options for when to enter the position. You should likely test multiple scenerios for the best results... because often an early entry but a closer stop loss can lead to more profitable trades. 
• Trade Size - Select whatever you feel comfortable with for your normal trading plan. Typically this doesn't matter because the strategy is either profitable or it isn't, so a position size of 1 or 100 isn't going to make a difference, this only changes later if your trading plan is to take a portion off the table and move your stop to break even or trade with brackets for closing out a position etc... note: At the time our indicators and backtesting do not support closing at certain intervals. 
• Price Type - Used for selecting the entry price or closing price of the position... This can be the open of the next bar, the close, the last price, or mark. Just make sure if you adjust this and see significant changes to the P&L that you also trade based on those same specifics.
• Use Time Filter - This allows you to select the trading hours that a you trade, or would like to see the profit and loss for... This is useful if you only trade specific hours, or if you want to avoid certain times of trading. So if trading the morning gap is not your trading style... you might consider changing the RTH (regular trading hours) open to be 1030 instead of 930 (if trading was based on EST market open etc..). 
• RTH Open / RTH Close - The time for open and close based on above settings if you choose to enable the time filter. 

Closing Position Settings

Its fair to say that while there might only be a single "open" for a position, the closing the position can be fired by many different setup options, and the first to confirm one of the conditions would then close the position. For example, if you enable the feature to set the last bars high / low as the stop loss, this would likely fire as a stop loss before the fixed dollar amount you might have specified... If you do not hit the target from the fixed dollar amount, or the target percentage, and you do not hit your stop by multiple methods... then if you have the setting enabled to Close EOD it will close your position then. 

• Close EOD - Certainly a setting that can change the results of your P&L! By default the setting is enabled to close out all positions within the last 'x' minutes of close, you can choose the regular trading hours and hours to close positions in another setting below.
• Set Last Bar Low Stop Loss - This would set the stop loss to the low of the previous bar.
• Last Bar Low Stop Loss Offset - This is used in case you want some "wiggle room" for the previous setting for the stop loss. For example, if the stop loss was set to the prior bars low, and that low was $54.25 and the offset setting was set to .50, then actually it would set the stop loss to $54.75. This is useful because often the stop loss might hit or the low might hit the exact amount of the previous candle and this provides some room to breath. 
• Close Position On Reversal Indicator = This would work as a stop loss if during the process the setup created an order in the opposite direction. For example if you are trading 5 minute pivots and have a long target and stop loss that has not been met however a separate pivot has indicated an order in the opposite direction this would close the position. 
• Close Position X Bars Past - Option to close the position if "x" bars have passed with the price going in the opposite direction as your trade. So if the you set this to be 5 and no other target or stop loss was triggered, it would trigger after 5 bars in the opposite direction of your trade. 
• Bar Exit - Based on the setting above, when its enabled this number is "x" for how many bars in the opposite direction should be checked. 
• Close Position Trail Stop - Typically used when all other stop loss's are not set and you simply want to let your trade "run" or close out EOD. You can set a trailing stop dollar amount and it will close out based on trailing dollar. 
• Close Position Trail Stop Dollar - The dollar amount used when trailing stop is enabled. For example if your long entry was $50.00 and you had a trailing stop of $3.00, if the stock immediately dropped to $47 it would close out, or if the stock went all the way up to $65 and then at some point dropped down to $62.00 then it would close the position. 
• Enable Scalp Long / Short- The scalp feature when enabled will close 1/2 of the position if that target is reached. 
• Scalp Amount Long / Short - The amount that corresponds to to the setting above when scalp feature is enabled. So if you have a target set to $5.00 and the scalp is set to $2.00, it will close half of the position at the $2.00 target. 
• Enable Target Long / Short  - Set as "Order Cancels Order" but really its just the target and stop loss, the target can be triggered by either percent or dollar amount (whichever fires first). So if you want the target to be set by target percent, then just set the target dollar amount to an extremely high dollar amount. 
• Target Percent Ratio  - The percent ratio to use as the target to close position. 
• Target Price - The  dollar amount to use as the target to close the position.
• Stop Price - The dollar amount to be set as the stop loss to automatically close the position. 

Hope this is helpful! 

-Chad