Strategy Builder Indicator Stop Loss Help

[Mark@NightOwlTrading]

Hello, I've been testing several strategies using the Strategy Builder, and I'm having an issue attaching a stop loss to an indicator.

I'm trying to do the following:

If all condition are met, go long.
Set stop loss at the 50sma.

Here the command from strategy builder:
SetStopLoss("", CalculationMode.Price, SMA(Close, 50)[0], false);

When I run a strategy analyzer or try to enable this strategy on a chart no results pop up, it's as if the strategy has never run.

If I remove this line the strategy runs fine, it just bounces back and forth between the Long and Short conditions.

Any Hints? Or can you not attach an indicator using Strategy Builder?
Thanks.
Mark.

[NinjaTrader_PaulH]

Hello Mark@NightOwlTrading,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the NinjaTrader forums.

In the strategy builder, you can only use static profit and stop targets, for example CalculationMode.Ticks, 20. The set methods, in the strategy builder, are placed in the State.Configure section of OnStateChange() which would limit changes to what could be set at run time. For example as a user input you can set the number of ticks to use (for stop or for profit or both) and when the strategy is run it would use that value from the UI and would apply those values to all trades made.

Alternatively, you could add condition sets that check to see if you are long or short and then place an appropriate exit limit order at the dynamically changing SMA, however in doing so you would not be able to use the set methods as well as this would cause conflicts with the internal order handling rules here: http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpG...d_approach.htm

Alternatively, to dynamically use the set methods (which are OCO linked) if you wish to unlock the code, then you can move the SetStopLoss() method into the OnBarUpdate where it can be dynamically assigned per your example. However once unlocked you would not be able to access the strategy through the strategy builder and could only work through the Ninjascript editor.

References:

http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/en-us/?setstoploss.htm

http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/en-us/?setprofittarget.htm

[Mark@NightOwlTrading]

Thanks for the info. I did exactly what you directed, and my strategy is working great.