strategies.ninja

Strategy war-room

Trading strategies, drawn to specification.

Honest, plain-English guides to rules-based and automated trading for NinjaTrader traders: how to build a strategy, how to test it without fooling yourself, and how to size the risk.

Start with the basicsHow to backtest
DWG 01 STRATEGY ANATOMYSCALE: NONEREV A MARKETDATA ENTRYCONDITION? TRUE FILTERPASSES? TRUE SIZE &SEND ORDER PROTECTIVESTOP PROFITTARGET FLAT FALSE: WAIT FALSE: SKIP NO TRADE, NEXT BAR 010203040506 SIGNAL LOGIC ORDER AND RISK LOGIC A STRATEGY IS A DECISION TREE WRITTEN SO A MACHINE CAN FOLLOW IT EVERY BAR: EVALUATE, DECIDE, DO NOTHING OR ACT
FIG. 01: A strategy as a drawing. Every automated strategy reduces to a decision tree like this one, with a market-data input, conditions, an order and an exit.

01What this site covers

strategies.ninja explains the thinking around automated trading, not a magic formula. There are no promised returns here, and no results to copy. Each guide is written to help you ask better questions of any strategy, your own or someone else's.

GUIDE 01

What is an automated trading strategy?

Entry, exit, sizing and filters, and how NinjaTrader runs them.

Open guide →GUIDE 02

How to backtest a strategy properly

Out-of-sample, walk-forward, honest costs and the traps that flatter results.

Open guide →GUIDE 03

Overfitting: when a strategy memorises the past

How a strategy memorises the past, and the checks that catch it.

Open guide →GUIDE 04

The main types of rules-based strategies

Trend, mean reversion, breakout, opening range and crossover.

Open guide →GUIDE 05

Risk management for rules-based trading

Sizing, daily loss, drawdown and prop firm rules.

Open guide →GUIDE 06

Forward testing: the stage after the backtest

Sim, small size live, what to measure and when to stop.

Open guide →

02Strategy anatomy

Every strategy, however clever it sounds, is made of the same few parts. Name them and you can test them, and you can see where a weak one is hiding.

01 ENTRYThe condition that opens a trade, with direction and order type. Read more
02 FILTERSRules for when not to trade: time windows, news, volatility, daily limits.
03 SIZEHow many contracts, tied to the stop distance and the loss you accept. Risk guide
04 EXITProtective stop, target, trailing or time exit. Often decides more than the entry does.

03What a test can look like

Equity curves are how most people judge a strategy, and they are easy to misread. The sketch below is not a result, only a map of the terms: peak, trough, drawdown and recovery time. Every real strategy has all four.

EQUITY PEAK TROUGH DRAWDOWN TIME TO RECOVER THE PEAK 12 0 EQUITY TRADES DWG 02 EQUITY CURVEILLUSTRATIVENOT REAL HAND-DRAWN SKETCH, NOT A RESULT. NO REAL TRADES. NO UNITS. 1 LOSSES ARE NORMAL INSIDE A WORKING PLAN 2 A NEW HIGH ENDS THE DRAWDOWN, NOT THE RISK
FIG. 08: Illustrative sketch only. Nothing here represents real trades or any expected outcome.
Honest by designPast performance does not guarantee future results. Backtests are simulations under assumptions you choose. We say what each method can and cannot tell you, and we leave out performance claims.

04Related resources

FREE GUIDES

NinjaTrader Guru

Step-by-step platform setup and how-to guides for NinjaTrader 8.

ninjatraderguru.com → SISTER SITE

indicators.ninja

Indicator explainers: what the tools your strategies rely on actually measure.

indicators.ninja → SISTER SITE

Moving average crossovers

A deep dive on the simplest trend-following rule.

movingaveragecrossover.com → SOFTWARE

Affordable Indicators

NinjaTrader 8 indicators, a Trade Copier and prop firm tools. See the software listing for current details.

View the listing → COMMUNITY

Join the Discord

Talk strategy and platform questions with other traders.

Open Discord →