SetTrailStop not working on simple strategy

[arbuthnot]

Hi - the instrument is ^DJIA and I'd like to set a trail stop of 10 Dow points for every trade. I'm working with 1000 range bars.

The relevant part of my code looks like this:

protected override void Initialize()
{
SetTrailStop("Longtrade", CalculationMode.Ticks, 10, true);
CalculateOnBarClose = true;

...

protected override void OnBarUpdate()

... conditions...

EnterLong(1, "Longtrade");


There's something here that isn't right and I'm sure the trail stops aren't being entered properly. I can tell visually this is a fairly profitable strategy yet in the Analyzer, the it just loses and loses!

I wonder if a possible source of confusion is that with ^DJIA, Range = 1000 is the same as 10 points in the Dow. This is something which I've never really fathomed.

By the way, I'm using a Sim account.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[NinjaTrader_AdamP]

arbuthnot,

I am happy to assist you.

There are known discrepancies in live trading vs. backtesting : http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/h...ime_vs_bac.htm

You could try using the following reference to give your strategy intrabar granularity in backtesting.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/forum/showthread.php?t=6652

The ticks would be set by the instrument you are trading, so if 1 tick is 0.1 this would be used in calculating the strategy's stop loss.

Please let me know if I may assist further.

[arbuthnot]

Thanks, Adam. With your help, I seem to have got these auto trails figured out now. I was indeed using the wrong 'tick' amount corresponding to the instrument in question.