Four short videos. Start to finish, you'll be running in simulation in about ten minutes.
Jump straight to it — no need to watch from the beginning.
Only watch this if you bought an Order Flow strategy — ImbalanceDefender, ImbalanceScalper, or anything with OF in the name. Everything else runs without it, so if that's not you, skip straight to Video 2.
Everyone watches this one. It takes you from the download to a strategy running on a chart in simulation.
My templates are the settings each strategy uses per instrument and timeframe. They install differently from the strategies — they get copied into a folder, not imported. NinjaTrader has no import button for them.
Template hours are written in U S Central Time. If your computer sits in any other time zone — Europe, the coasts, anywhere — NinjaTrader runs the sessions at the wrong hour for you. This video shows the two-minute offset fix, and the clock-change weeks to watch.
Almost always one of two things. Either NinjaTrader was open while you imported, or the
import didn't finish cleanly. Close NinjaTrader completely, reopen it, and import again from
Tools > Import > NinjaScript Add-On.
If it still doesn't appear, open New > NinjaScript Editor and press
F5 to compile. Any errors there will tell you what's blocking it.
Walk through it in Video 2 →
The templates aren't where NinjaTrader expects them. They belong in
Documents\NinjaTrader 8\templates\Strategy\, in a folder named
exactly the same as the strategy — TurnKeyORBOF, not ORBOF.
One character off and the list comes up blank.
Also make sure NinjaTrader was closed when you copied them in. Templates only load at startup. Walk through it in Video 3 →
There are two quantity settings and they fight each other. Default quantity is
the number of contracts. Set order quantity decides whether that number is
actually used.
Set Set order quantity to Default quantity, then put your size in
the Default quantity box. If Set order quantity is left on
Strategy, your number is ignored and the strategy's own value is used instead.
Shown in Video 2 →
One more thing worth knowing: if you're running several strategies on the same instrument, your position is the sum across all of them. Three strategies at two contracts each is six contracts, not two.
That's the News Blackout setting. If Use News Blackout is checked, the strategy
needs my News Calendar indicator installed — and if it isn't there, the strategy halts the
session on purpose rather than trading blind through news.
If you're not using the News Calendar, uncheck Use News Blackout and the
strategy runs normally. If you do want it, install the indicator first.
Shown in Video 2 →
Volumetric is a bar type, not an indicator — you set it under
Data Series > Type, not in the Indicators window. That's where most people
get stuck looking.
If you've set it correctly and the bars still don't render, you don't have Order Flow access. It comes with a NinjaTrader lifetime licence, the Order Flow + add-on, or a funded NinjaTrader brokerage account. A prop-firm account routed through Rithmic or Tradovate does not include it. Shown in Video 1 →
Work down this list. Are you inside the strategy's session hours? Is the instrument and timeframe the same as the template you loaded — a 1 Min template on a 5 Min chart won't behave. Is News Blackout on without the indicator installed? And for Order Flow strategies, is Tick Replay enabled with historical tick data downloaded?
Start it in Sim and let it run a full session before judging it. Some strategies wait for a specific setup and simply won't fire on a quiet day.
Outside the US? A wrong timezone is the number one reason a running strategy trades at strange hours or never touches the US session — check the fix below.
If you're outside US Central Time, this is the one to read. Every time field in my templates is US Central. When a template says 8:30, that's 8:30 Central — 9:30 in New York — the US cash open. NinjaTrader reads those hour boxes against your computer's timezone, so on a German PC the opening range gets built at 8:30 Berlin time: trades show up in your morning, and by the time the US actually opens at 15:30 your time, the strategy's internal day is already over.
The fix — add the offset to every Hour field. Minutes stay the same.
New York (ET) +1 · Denver (MT)
−1 · Los Angeles (PT) −2 ·
London +6 · Berlin / Paris / most of Europe +7
· somewhere else: use the offset between Central and your zone.
Example, if you're in Germany: OR Start 8:30 → 15:30,
First Entry 8:35 → 15:35, Last Entry
12:30 → 19:30, Hard Last Entry 14:45 →
21:45, Force Exit 14:55 → 21:55.
Exact field names vary a little by strategy — the QuickStart in your download lists them
all, and the same rule applies to every Hour box.
Two more things. If you already backtested, re-run after the change — the earlier runs were testing overnight hours in New York time. And twice a year the Europe offset briefly becomes 6 instead of 7 (the late-October and mid-March weeks when Europe and the US change clocks on different dates).
Still stuck after all that? Send me a note and tell me which video and which step you got to — that alone usually tells me exactly what's happening, and I can get you a straight answer instead of a back-and-forth.
Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. These videos are educational and cover software setup only. Nothing here is trading advice or a recommendation to trade any particular market or strategy.