Algo Futures Trader

Automated futures day trading systems

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Secret to Day trading futures success

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Our goal is very simple, buck the trend and disrupt the trading retail ecosystem with disruptive pricing,  ethics, real deal tools and to create as many winners as possible and do it for free until they are live trading and that is our mission!! 

So how do traders become so successful with AFT? By taking advantage of our holistic approach to day trading we provide a 360 degree approach with systems tools and coaching for FREE! We provide the tools and the tuition in our free trading room to optimize results with the hybrid interactive semi automatic approach whereby trades are filtered to a long or short bias for automated entry in AFT7 or manual entry in AFT8 Beta pending the automation.

The trading system entry filters we can teach and provide are used as external rules to guide trading on the systems, these can consist of gaps and other technical higher time frame price analysis, market news cycle, market price cycle, levels and seasonal to name just a few. some of these are discussed with chart screenshots some of these are provided by other web trading tools provided.

So we are delighted since the June 2021 we started our new free futures day trading group Many traders got started trading 100% free and got funded by passing a trading capital provider evaluation using our systems or simply made profits on their own trading account risk capital. All of these people focused and were driven, did a lot of learning and got involved asked questions and deserver their success – we salute you, you make it all worth while.

So the secret to successful day trading for these traders was based on these list of trading systems and tools which are available for you right now -there is no catch, no obligation, no time limits, no money or details needed there is no risk and no harm in trying the following to learn on sim trading to become consistent and successful at trading:

The 5 step Basic Day Trading Approach for NYSE Session Breakout

1) Get to the desk before the open… 9am EST or so  – check news
2) Check the 4 main indices and see what happened prior… look to see what gaps are forming
3) Armed with that if the gaps are all different or all the same for example… GapBias
4)Look at the alphabias… etc  understand the strength of the instruments going into the open to make a selection of what to trade
5) Trading  9.30EST to around 11.30EST 1 to 3 signals per day – Signal + filters

Alpha Web Trader
Alpha Web Trader Realtime Day Trading Tools for Futures, ETFs and FAANG
Algo futures trading us equity indices signals
Algo futures trading us equity indices signals with gap filter system

Trading & Risk 101

Trading is simple but not easy, please do it safely and don't rush, it takes a lot of practice & stoicism, wining and losing cycles are expected!  5 quick tips to consider! 

    1. Impatience: FOMO - Fear of missing out, never rush to live money trade! Get consistent success sim trading 1 to 3 months then decide.
    2. Trade Capital: Get funded to day trade futures with a trading capital provider, no need to use your funds learning to trade.
    3. Micro Futures: Start with the smallest futures instruments such as Micro lots 1 to 3 lots to scale out
    4. Risk: Always use the smallest risk position sizing possible for example 1% or less of trade capital per trade
    5. Trade a plan: Don't chase the market or over-trade, focus on a systematic approach get consistent, trade the plan &  keep stats.
  • Learn & Trade risk free on the sim, demo account in NinjaTrader for free forever - AFT has no time limit, when you are ready and have proven to yourself that you are able to be successful at your own pace, you can consider live trading futures with AFT and NinjaTrader at your own discretion. Accelerate learning with a 1 to 1 day trading futures coaching but even then don't rush to live trade, put the learning into practice attend our  Free Futures Day Trading Group  for live market coaching voice and streaming at 9AM EST to 11.30 EST Mon to Fri.
  • Winning & Losing Cycles. You need to experience at least 1 to  3 months to see the typical cycles of the market and news cycles weeks of the months. You might start on a winning cycle on sim and suffer from recency bias, thinking its always easy to trade and rush to go live only to get hit by a losing cycle in live money trading and then pull the plug and freak out then you will miss the next winning cycle taking all the losers and missing all the winners the double whammy of trading! 
  • There is No short cut,  it takes time,  get a routine, practice and wait  until you are consistent month to month on the sim at your discretion and then consider live money,  or if you are certain sure you got the ability at the start, at the very least get funded to trade with a 3rd party trading capital so they take the risk...!  You may well catch a longer term easy phase of trading from the get go, and make good but eventually it will happen you will get a drawdown and a string of loses...losing days and even weeks may occur but if you the trader are consistent over the long term month to month you can succeed.
 

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Learn to trade successfully at your on pace with no time limits, use self-assisted support tools, visit the trading group for live market mentoring in the daily private group trade along, group chat & support forum or contact our support help desk

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AFT memorial day sale 25% off lifetime licenses for AFT7 and AFT8

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Simply enter this coupon mday25% at checkout and you will get 25% off the premium or ultimate lifetime deals.
Please note the offer lasts for 2 week and expires April 11th

Both the premium and ultimate package include AFT7 for NinjaTrader 7 and AFT8 for NinjaTrader 8.
So you can lock in a discount now for a lifetime license to include AFT7 and AFT8 full version when its released in stages this year. Compare pricing for more details and view the license information for free, premium & ultimate versions of AFT

Plug and Trade – Turnkey Trading Systems for day trading futures

Simply Install, Connect. Learn and practice with ready to use turnkey settings and workspaces for Session Open Breakout trading and Trend Trading reversal and pullback continuation trading. Start NinjaTrader, connect to a futures data feed & open an AFT Turnkey workspace, the trading systems will appear on chart and are ready for simulator trading micro equity Index futures.
  1. Get NinjaTrader & a datafeed
  2. Download & install AFT
  3. Get started day trading with AFT
 

What’s next with the AFT8 update?

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With regret as the sole creator and developer of AFT8 i have to inform you that I was out for the count for 2 weeks with a fever and throaty cough and i’m not sure if it was COVID or flu so I made no progress at all on the AFT8 update sine the last version mid March – however i am glad to say i am pretty much recovered except for lingering lethargy and have been coding again.

AFT8 is still in a beta and has a long way to go before all the planned features are released.
It will be worth the wait, it needs to be its going to be my main retail account trader.

Ok so there will be updates of the AFT8 system from next week –
fixing of bug to save settings on the main signals indicator, ease of use feature for configuration
and some inclusions of swing trading/ weekly fib grid trading features in the turnkey workspaces. Here’s why.

AFT retail day trading version of software came from a much larger swing trading multi server, client/server n tier, SOA, cloud based system with NT8 at its core providing the awesome technicals, execution and trade management. AFT as such contains a small subset of the functionality but exactly enough for the algo premise and capability for day trading and some swing trading but with user interactivity for many of the tasks. The hedge funds system will cost you 50KUSD plus fees and data server overheads per annum to use. AFT retail starts at free…. The following will give you some idea about the 2 versions.

So during that time of my absentee the CPC/AFT Hedge fund systems continued to work even though the developer algo trader was not in attendance. The servers restarted each weekend via windows task scheduler and update themselves, NT8 is then started and historical data is downloaded each for the last week and replicated out from a main server to other servers to negate the need to download again.

With the full hedge fund version – there is no need for a user at all -except for rollovers and in emergencies or system selection – it is 100% fully automated trading in the real sense and i am not allowed even if i want to intervene. Not allowed to enter or close a trade, move a target, trail a stop… so we get a pure dataset of stats. Sometimes it means there were trades i would not have done but some it does incredible trades that were far better than me, over time it works and that is the goal.

A hedge fund performance has to be measurable to something tangible and risk control also so removing all humans is the way to do it ideally as a human is hard to backtest and benchmark. They get sick too or move jobs… so when i’m talking fully automated its big trade accounts and no fiddling or making it up as you go.. all the systems that make it to live from the 1000s that don’t go through system selection, board approval and compliance for annual auditing – no pressure 🙂

AFT retail traders benefits from a hybrid feature set to allow fully as well as manual/semi automated trading which is really very important for retail day trading as it is less forgiving than swing trading. AFT benefits from many years and many 100KS USD of research and development and real trading of the systems professionally in automated swing trading and they end up as much as possible as turnkey for day trading with minimal tweaking required.

CPC /AFT algos  for the hedge fund start on a Sunday, the week begins, the windows task scheduler process with start NT8 in time to trade the CME open for indices, connecting to various datafeeds in turn for each exchange and feed -then loads the workspaces and loads the algos and starts them a mix of sim and live. For each system each algo will inspects orders and removes any anomalies within NinjaTrader and then processes the positions and orders, risk and technical context and continues trading where it left off adapting to any changes and implement fault tolerance and safety.

Technically the CPC /AFT algos are part of a a greater system – a signals framework, execution management system (EMS), order management system (OMS), position and trade management, rollover liquidation, data acquisition , automated web stats collation and reporting system and automatic trade safety system and more besides- evolved in NinjaTrader and .net, .net core, asp.net core, MSSQL and Azure service bus, created over a 4 year period.

It is quite incredible what we have achieved with the technology directly due to the amazing work of the NinjaTrader development team to allow us access to all areas to create what we want limited by imagination and skill only. So in short even though the developer was away and useless the system continued onwards fully automated regardless so no trades were missed an no one goofed things up with under par irrational decision making.

In my absence then here is a pretty good trade example of the CPC/AFT Weekly Swing trading algo took up to the high last week 2021-April-16. Now reversed and closed into a small short this week- 10K per lot was the MFE trading Emini S&P – just with a 4 lot trade of about 5K to $7500 Risk on that volatility. It could have been a lot more based on the past and recent times but its still a respect worthty demonstration of what we can achieve with the tool set.
USAR WSFG swing trade fully automated no manual trading interaction ES
We will provide this WSFG weekly setup as part of AFT8 turnkey settings for micro indices and Emini so that traders can use it as a guide for intraday or indeed take the weekly SFG Signals.

As you can see yes this is a live trade note that chart trader is black and the account does not being with Sim…we really do trade and we really do use these tools – The AFT day trading system is a version built for small account trading based on the professional hedge fund trading for which it was originally created. So the day trading version is basically a daily session breakout instead of weekly for swing trading. You can also see the power of the risk reward in action on this type of system and the staying in trend following method.

AFT8 is available in the shop as free product AFT8 Free Trading System or available from the AFT download page
Articles and videos will follow on installation but should be very simple if you can use a mouse and pc and get around any AV warnings etc. – please visit the support and help desk

Plug and Trade – Turnkey Trading Systems for day trading futures

Simply Install, Connect. Learn and practice with ready to use turnkey settings and workspaces for Session Open Breakout trading and Trend Trading reversal and pullback continuation trading. Start NinjaTrader, connect to a futures data feed & open an AFT Turnkey workspace, the trading systems will appear on chart and are ready for simulator trading micro equity Index futures.

  1. Get NinjaTrader & a datafeed
  2. Download & install AFT
  3. Get started day trading with AFT

 

how to place stop loss and targets for day trading futures with NinjaTrader 8 and AFT8

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There are 2 main methods for the placement of stop loss stop orders and profit limit orders:
“Static” using a fixed distance and “Adaptive” using a non fixed amount in this case at a Technical stop/target placement setting stop and target orders to various technical levels on the chart.

You can trade with a loose approach or a tighter approach when using exits to control risk/stop loss and profit points..  Trading with closer targets provides a higher win ratio  and a far target approach will result in a smaller win ratio  but a greater risk reward average.   By using multiple targets it is possible to scale out and implement sophisticated trade management techniques to take profit and trap in profit with stop loss trails as well as run for trend breakout days.
A tighter stop loss will cause a lower win ratio but a larger risk reward however if its too tight you system expectancy will be negative. What we aim to do is keep trading frequency lower – 1 to 3 trades per session is a good amount if required – the first might be the only one you need. So we have a wide stop loss and let the system breathe and run -this actually increases the risk but also increases the win ratio and probability of the system.

Much of that choice is down to the preference of the trader however the usage of can be governed by inside and outside gap days and range/trend price cycles and market structure and order flow on the day, to decide to have a nearer tighter game or more loose game or use a hybrid combination good in all weather to take profit off the table as soon as possible and still allow a good run to capture as much as possible as 100% of the daily move.

For proven and advanced traders, a quick note about variable position sizing based on High probability conditional trade setup versus a more arbitrary entry etc. In addition to target and stop loss arrangement – You can also consider half clip and full clip trades for example you might want to trade with 8 lots on a micro futures but if you are not sure on a trade but you might miss a runner if you stay out ok then, you can go half clip 4 lots and when the market is clearer, less mixed, more directional across all indices and the conditional setup pattern and time you might go full clip 8 lots which would need to be within your max % per trade up to1% is way enough for a beginner – you could conceivably add to a half clip position also in a pullback for example but this is not recommended for beginners as it can lead to doubling down and a random off the hip trading style abandoning the systematic approach and ultimate failure.

Static ATM defined Stop Loss and Profit Target Orders

Pending the AFT8 Easy Trader/NinjaBuddy GUI you can use the NinjaTrader Chart Trader and ATM to automatically place exit stop loss and profit targets and interact with them on a chart in realtime.

The following can easily be created in the NinjaTrader ATM, additionally you can add break even stop loss strategies such as at T1 move to breakeven or move in by 50% of the risk for example.

  • Static Stop loss and Targets examples for educational use
    • ES/MES
      • Stop Loss: 28 tick
      • Target 1: 10 tick
      • Target 2: 16 tick,
      • Target 3: 100 tick
    • NQ/MNQ
      • Stop Loss: 35 tick
      • Target 1: 20 tick
      • Target 2: 30 tick,
      • Target 3: 100 tick

Technical Stop Loss and Targets using the Fib Grid levels

Stop loss and profit targets are placed at Fib Grid Levels – and are therefore adaptive advanced intelligent trade management which can be applied to any market/instrument.

I preferer this method always, imagine that I have to sometimes test and elect to trade on a universe of some 65 futures markets, trying to find out what static ticks would be best would taking up 1,000s of hours of ongoing testing to re-optimize and guide as the market phases and ranges change making life unbearably hard work. So in fact that’s not required at all or best, instead simply use my Fib gird levels adapt to the market and range as it changes and save all that brain ache. Ofcourse with the correct pending AFT8 technology you can couple that with a volatility adjusted stop loss fixed fractional position size and add in scaling out and now you are professional setup, meantime with manual adjustment as long as your stoploss risk is within acceptable parameters and a sensible price you are good to go.

Loose setup – low win ratio high risk reward

  • Stop Loss Technical position is behind the No Trade Zone (NTZ) yellow Rectangle
  • Target 1 – 2 lots at the 50% regions on the grid
  • Target 2 – 1 Lot  76% region
  • Target 3 is a runner or 100% grid line

AFT8 Day trading futures stops and targets with chart trader position and order visualization
AFT8 Day trading futures stops and targets with chart trader position and order visualization

Technical Stop Loss Trail

Example Stepping Fib Grid Trail, when price moves and closed above the 50% blue line move the stoploss to the  far side of  fib grid price grid line -25% grid trail   or alternatively follow the USAR…look for the trailing triangles.

So how did that trade pan out?
T1 and T2 acquired – 3rd bracket was trailed down and taken out at -f61%

Tighter setup high win ratio  &  medium risk reward

  • Stop Loss Technical position is behind the No Trade Zone (NTZ) yellow Rectangle
  • Target 1 – 2 lots at the 23% regions on the grid  (could also be 33%)
  • Target 2 – 1 Lot  50% region
  • Target 3 is a runner or 100% grid line

AFT8 Near Targets Semi trend scalping trading Approach to take profit early but still allow a runner and positive risk reward

ATM automatic stoploss and Target placement with manual adjustment
You can configure and use the ATM to place the stops and targets and then simply use the mouse on the chart to move the orders to the various fib grid positions. Please visit the AFT help guides also for articles on day trading futures stop loss and targets

Please note this article is for educational use only this is not investment or trading advice -you need to test out and make your own decision based on statistical evidence

Plug and Trade – Turnkey Trading Systems for day trading futures

Simply Install, Connect. Learn and practice with ready to use turnkey settings and workspaces for Session Open Breakout trading and Trend Trading reversal and pullback continuation trading. Start NinjaTrader, connect to a futures data feed & open an AFT Turnkey workspace, the trading systems will appear on chart and are ready for simulator trading micro equity Index futures.

  1. Get NinjaTrader & a datafeed
  2. Download & install AFT
  3. Get started day trading with AFT

 

AFT8 workspace update fibgrid trend % correlations

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The featured post image is a fully automated algo trading Russell 2000 with the Alpha bias intraday near and medium terms trend correlation module – this is only 1 part of the full gamut system of futures indices I use for my hedge fund trading, some features of which i am porting into the AT8 system to contain a subset of the hedge fund futures portfolio trading system. Traders, yes we really trade professionally with this tech and i don’t mean to entice by showing a real trade with real cash – i make no song or dance – big deal yet another picture of a trade, yawn… that’s a scalp in the grand scheme, but the point is, it shows a NYSE daily session breakout fib grid SFG daily short signal taken and traded and the use of the grid for targets and stops and the full version of Alpha Bias trendometer which AFT8 is spliced from…a matured trading technology only now being released after many years of usage and battle tested in live real money hedge fund trading with millions of USD for risk capital using advanced servers and technologies costing some $100KUSD per annum to run it. Now being brought to you in small form factor for desktop retail trading for you to get started day trading futures…with real deal trading tools for NinjaTrader 8 so you can trade like a pro with an edge from real deal trading systems and methodologies – AFT8 will lead the way as the best trading system for NinjaTrader from the MicroTrends hall of fame of trading systems.

AFT8 daily session fib grid day trading russell 2000 futures fully automated
AFT8 daily session fib grid day trading russell 2000 futures fully automated

So yes AFT8 will have a very similar shape, form and function, but more lightweight interactive features so it can be fully or semi automated whereas the hedge fund system is 100% algo… really not suitable for 99% of retail accounts sizes and tastes, so don’t worry AFT8 is a much smaller piece and more controllable, therefore a small price and is free unless you live trade with it.. and as the original architect and pioneer of hybrid algo trading systems we will provide features to allow easy trading and management of day trading size/small accounts – but we need time to code and release – step by step -so the next step is to add the trend correlations as below.

So the latest AFT8 Workspace update has the start of TrendOmeter Market Analyzer with Daily Fib Grid Values.
Net % is a meaningless value unless you know the typical market net % – that’s too much homework and not the now it’s yesterday. We want to see today and the current Realtime situation in the live market.
With AFT8 we make trading easy and normalize every market as a grid of % with fib grid
F0% is the open
-F100% is the bottom of the market
+F100% is the top of the market

So we can see where the price is as a % we don’t need the price – price is meaningless also without knowledge of price levels. The current Fib grid % is the key to understanding the market view from a particular session start at 0%.
We can then apply this to sessions and understand the market structure with out a chart and know the story of the market from the prior session to now or further back at a glance. Critically we can understand the trend correlation and market short term view -is is a mixed up jumbled up market or is it a moving trending flowing directional market with a decisive trend up or down -these conditions and identifying them and how to trade them if at all or to sit on the side and wait is the key to trading a trend from the beginning to the end -the trend is your friend until the end, let winners run… these clichés are timeless – and they really work.

AFT8 Fib grid TrendOmeter workspace
AFT8 Fib grid TrendOmeter workspace

To get the latest code it should automatically update after you restart NinjaTrader 8 within 1 day -however if you want to manually get the update you can simply run your installer from your PC again and it will grab the latest code and installer workspaces and install. Please visit the Algo Futures Trader downloads page for details.

Traders all the best with your trading… drop us a line at support for any feedback or let us know how its going.
Many thanks, Tom.

Plug and Trade – Turnkey Trading Systems for day trading futures

Simply Install, Connect. Learn and practice with ready to use turnkey settings and workspaces for Session Open Breakout trading and Trend Trading reversal and pullback continuation trading. Start NinjaTrader, connect to a futures data feed & open an AFT Turnkey workspace, the trading systems will appear on chart and are ready for simulator trading micro equity Index futures.

  1. Get NinjaTrader & a datafeed
  2. Download & install AFT
  3. Get started day trading with AFT

 

AFT8 for NinjaTrader 8 beta released

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AFT8 version 20221.3.12.4 is now available for all traders for all futures for free!

As promised this week we have released AFT8 for beta only some of the core indicators and there is much work to do and over time we will fix any issues from your feedback for bugs and glitches and add any features that make sense for all traders to have.

Going forwards we will have weekly released if not daily and add features -these typically if all goes well update after you closed down NinjaTrader 8 – AFT8 will update itself and add any factory default workspaces and templates modifications.

AFT8 is available in the shop as free product AFT8 Free Trading System or available from the AFT download page
Articles and videos will follow on installation but should be very simple if you can use a mouse and pc and get around any AV warnings etc. – please visit the support and help desk

The installer is so new that all antivirus will be moaning and asking to check and quarantine it. This is something we cannot avoid all the code installers are code signed with MicroTrends Digicert Code signing. When the installer has earned a reputation by enough downloads AV will become less bothersome.

AFT8 is a beta so it might have some issues we can’t test internally but we have tested it on a small selection of users already prior to this release.

AFT8 installer will download the latest code and templates/workspaces and install them into your documents NinjaTrader location. It will expect a default NinjaTrader installation.

Please note the AFT8 version 20221.3.12.4 only provides at this time trade charting indicators systematic trading signals, alerts and speech, no automated trading features as yet- we will update and release these features in the coming weeks.

Getting Started with AFT8
After you installer AFT8 from the AFT8 download page – start NinjaTrader 8. Then open 1 of the turnkey workspaces.
There are 2 workspaces installed which both provide turnkey systematic day trading signals for manual order placement for day trading micro futures MES, MNQ, MYM, M2K.

  • AFT8 – Beta
    • 4 charts with no tabs MES, MNQ,MYM, M2K
    • trading time frame charts DSFG USAR combo
  • AFT8-SFG Breakout Trader-0000A
    • Multi time frame tabbed charts higher time frame to trading time frame charts
    • Enable download of COT data in your NinjaTrader 8 options market data for the COT indicator to function in workspace
    • Your version of NT8 needs to support Tabbed charts – contact [email protected] if you are unsure.

  • AFT8 Daily SFG USAR Combo NASDAQ Futures
    AFT8 Daily SFG USAR Combo NASDAQ Futures
  • AFT8 Weekly SFG USAR 60minute NASDAQ Futures
    AFT8 Weekly SFG, USAR, Swing Pivots and TrendX on a 60minute nasdaq micro futures chart
  • AFT8 Monthly SFG USAR Swing Pivots Volume COT EOD NASDAQ Futures
    AFT8 Monthly SFG USAR Swing Pivots Volume COT EOD NASDAQ Futures
  • AFT8 Monthly SFG USAR Swing Pivots 120min NASDAQ Futures
    AFT8 Monthly SFG USAR Swing Pivots 120min NASDAQ Futures
  • AFT8 Daily SFG USAR Swing Pivots 30min NASDAQ Futures
    AFT8 Daily SFG USAR Swing Pivots 30min NASDAQ Futures
  • AFT8 Daily SFG USAR Combo 5 minute NASDAQ Futures
    AFT8 Daily SFG USAR Combo 5 minute NASDAQ Futures

Plug and Trade – Turnkey Trading Systems for day trading futures

Simply Install, Connect. Learn and practice with ready to use turnkey settings and workspaces for Session Open Breakout trading and Trend Trading reversal and pullback continuation trading. Start NinjaTrader, connect to a futures data feed & open an AFT Turnkey workspace, the trading systems will appear on chart and are ready for simulator trading micro equity Index futures.

  1. Get NinjaTrader & a datafeed
  2. Download & install AFT
  3. Get started day trading with AFT

 

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