NinjaTrader Automated Trading by Algo Futures Trader

hybrid algorithmic automated futures trading for prop firm traders, day & swing traders

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 two weeks with a fever and a throaty cough. I’m not sure if it was COVID or the flu, so I made no progress at all on the AFT8 update since the last version in 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 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 as it’s going to be my main retail account trader. There will be updates to the AFT8 system starting next week, including fixing a bug to save settings on the main signals indicator, an ease-of-use feature for configuration, and some inclusions of swing trading/weekly fib grid trading features in the turnkey workspaces. Here’s why.

The AFT retail day trading version of the 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 contains a small subset of the functionality but exactly enough for the algo premise and capability for day trading and some swing trading, with user interactivity for many of the tasks. The hedge fund system will cost you 50K USD plus fees and data server overheads per annum to use. AFT retail starts at free. The following will give you some idea about the two versions.

During my absence, 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 updated themselves. NT8 is then started, and historical data is downloaded each 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, to intervene. Not allowed to enter or close a trade, move a target, or trail a stop, so we get a pure dataset of stats. Sometimes it means there were trades I would not have done, but sometimes it does incredible trades that were far better than me. Over time, it works, and that is the goal.

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

AFT retail traders benefit 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 hundreds of thousands of USD of research and development and real trading of the systems professionally in automated swing trading. 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 will start NT8 in time to trade the CME open for indices, connecting to various data feeds in turn for each exchange and feed. Then it loads the workspaces and loads the algos and starts them, a mix of sim and live. For each system, each algo will inspect orders and remove any anomalies within NinjaTrader, then process the positions and orders, risk, and technical context, and continue trading where it left off, adapting to any changes and implementing fault tolerance and safety.

Technically, the CPC/AFT algos are part of 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 four-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 and no one goofed things up with under-par irrational decision-making.

In my absence, here is a pretty good trade example of the CPC/AFT Weekly Swing trading algo, which 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 it’s still a respect-worthy demonstration of what we can achieve with the toolset.

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 the chart trader is black and the account does not begin 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 a 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 two main methods for the placement of stop-loss 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 lock 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 it’s too tight, your 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 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 a 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, then you can go half clip with 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 with 8 lots, which would need to be within your max % per trade. Up to 1% 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 real-time.

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 ticks
      • Target 1: 10 ticks
      • Target 2: 16 ticks
      • Target 3: 100 ticks
    • NQ/MNQ
      • Stop Loss: 35 ticks
      • Target 1: 20 ticks
      • Target 2: 30 ticks
      • Target 3: 100 ticks

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 prefer 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 take up thousands 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 grid levels to adapt to the market and range as it changes and save all that brain ache. Of course, 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 have a professional setup. Meantime, with manual adjustment, as long as your stop-loss 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 at the 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 closes above the 50% blue line, move the stop-loss to the far side of the 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%

Technical Stop-Loss Trail Visualization

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 at the 50% region
  • Target 3 is a runner or 100% grid line

AFT8 Near Targets Semi Trend Scalping Trading Approach
AFT8 Near Targets Semi Trend Scalping Trading Approach to take profit early but still allow a runner and positive risk reward

ATM Automatic Stop-Loss 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

 

NinjaTrader 8 AFT version status as of Feb 2021

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The long-awaited NT8 version is still a work in progress.

There are many challenges and workarounds with migrating from NT7 to NT8. The “WPF” technology is a significant hurdle and offers, in some ways, less capability but in most ways far better than its predecessor, “Windows Forms.” WinForms was lightning quick to use and develop in but was discontinued, hence NinjaTrader had no alternative but to switch to WPF, which is very slow, ponderous, and laborious to develop applications with in comparison.

The good news is that NT8 is light years ahead of NT7 and allows us to create unimaginable features and methods compared to prior versions. The trading is faster, the data is faster, and the presentation is even better. All in all, the wait will be very worthwhile, so the only downside is really development time.

NT8 does allow the up-to-date .NET Microsoft framework 4.8, but the caveat is the WPF layer it uses is of older versions. This means we are limited and restricted and not able to use the full gamut of tools and components from our development kits. It means there is a lot of rework and dead ends, and a lot of time-consuming effort, weeks and months spent, until we find a workaround to resolve the hurdles. That is the norm in development—nothing worth doing is easy, and then we have to do it all again for NinjaTrader 9 down the road, but it will be far easier, we expect.

Due to delays and developer obligations to hedge fund algo trading, the only way we are going to get a release out is to do it in stages. So in February, the indicators will be rolled out and released, followed by the Trading System automated Easy Trader and NinjaTrader 8 strategy back-tester, etc.

The Alpha Bias and Trendometer may also be complemented with or replaced by a remote API version due to the performance overhead this has on some machines, but time will tell.

There will be ongoing updates and releases over time. The project will easily continue over a 6-month period as new features are released also.

Please help us use our time wisely, and do not weigh down resources by asking the help desk for support regarding when the AFT8 is going to arrive. Please keep a check on social media and newsletters. February will see the first indicators as the plan goes.

Day trading NASDAQ futures with AFT semi autonomous trade management trading system

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Super nice NQ trade setup using our exclusive Algo Hybrid NinjaTrader Automated Day Trading System with semi/fully-autonomous trade entry and adaptive fully automatic trade management. Algo Futures Trader provides the best in class and the best of both worlds of automated and systematic trading for beginners and veterans. High probability entry trading for the session open, 1 to 3 hours per day is all you need.

micro e-mini NASDAQ algo trade fully auto entry and trade management

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In this video, we demonstrate the full process of our Algorithmic Futures Trader entry and stop filtering system for a fully automated entry.

After our proprietary AFT trend filter add-on algorithm confirms the most probable trend momentum, we then enable the full power of our AFT entry and stop management module to take control of our trade in a fully automated manner. No more emotional trading!

Trading should be simple and as easy as possible, with a consistent routine and approach every trading day.

At AFT, we provide turnkey settings so a new trader or veteran can simply start to trade out of the box from day one with an emotion-free trade entry autonomous system featuring volatility-adjusted fully automated trading management.

AFT is not a get-rich-quick scheme or a stack-it-high-and-sell-it-cheap system. So if you consider yourself cheap, obviously, this might not be for you. Trader seats are limited, and all potential traders are screened before acceptance for basic futures trading experience, risk attitude, and trading risk capital. Beginners and veterans are welcome.

Live micro e-mini nasdaq manual entry with AFT signal and automated trade management

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For real-deal traders who wish to trade for a living by trading only 1 to 3 hours per day, the New York Morning Session leverages trading automation systems for futures trading.

Algo Futures Trader (AFT) is a complete algorithmic futures day trading methodology, featuring automated trading entry and trade management technology, purpose-built for trading the US Equity Index Futures and oil futures live. Day trading can be simple with AFT Automated Trade entry, risk, and trade management for the NinjaTrader trading platform.

In this video, we demonstrate the power of our Algorithmic Futures Trader filtering system for manual entry. After the AFT signals a continuation long position entry, we double-confirmed the trend with our proprietary add-on module exclusively for the AFT system, the Trend O Meter. We took a manual entry and then allowed the AFT system to manage the trade fully automated. Trading should be simple and as easy as possible, with a consistent routine and approach every trading day.

At AFT, we provide turnkey settings so a new trader or veteran can simply start to trade out of the box from day one with emotion-free trade entry and an autonomous system with volatility-adjusted fully automated trading management.

AFT is not a get-rich-quick scheme or a stack-it-high-and-sell-it-cheap system. If you consider yourself cheap, obviously, this is not for everyone. Trader seats are limited, and all potential traders are screened before acceptance for basic futures trading experience, risk attitude, and trading risk capital. Beginners and veterans are welcome.