Strategy Building with Optimal Ninja

All of our indicators can be automated.

Want to build pivot level strategies using Optimal Pivots backtested statistics? No problem. You can test for whether price is above or below any pivot level and whether it has been previously touched in the session. You can call percentage touch rates and percentage close rates for any pivot in a session, and for the prior session high, low and close.

Interested in market breadth divergences? Optimal Market Breadth makes it simple to incorporate these into your strategy building.

Using non-time bars? Optimal Speed can test for slow bars, crawl bars and the slowest up/down bars of the session. Optimal Tempo can integrate minute bar timeframe levels into your testing. 

Huge flexibility. Endless scope to explore your trade ideas.

A vast amount has been written about building and testing trading strategies. These are our top three tips:

1. Observations based on conjecture and experience and confirmed through testing are usually sound

It is much better to start with a theory of market behaviour that sounds reasonable, and to confirm with testing, than to uncover an apparently magical edge through optimization. Optimized results that are not underpinned by logical reasoning may simply be revealing random parameter fitting.

2. Fewer rules result in a more robust outcome

Traders often add complexity in the search for certainty. In discretionary trading, this usually results in charts that look like a Jackson Pollock painting. In automated trading, it increases the chance of curve fitting. Both result in adverse outcomes. We recommend four or fewer variables in a strategy. 

3. More test data is better

Testing over a longer time period will include more market modes: trending, wide-amplitude cycles, low volatility and price shocks.