TradingView Indicator for Day Trading Futures (NQ, ES, MNQ, MES)

Day trading index futures is fast, and every point moves real money on every contract. A signal on its own is not enough. A useful futures indicator answers four questions before you click buy or sell:

• Where is the entry, and is it a long or a short?
• Where does the trade get stopped out, and where are the targets?
• Is this signal inside the hours I actually trade, or in a thin overnight market I want to skip?
• How many contracts does this risk allow, and can the alert reach the platform I trade on?

OptiTrade answers all four on your TradingView chart. The rest of this page shows how, contract by contract and setting by setting.

OptiTrade works on all charts and all timeframes, and futures and indices are among the markets it supports. Open the futures chart you trade in TradingView and add the indicator to it like any other script. The continuous-contract symbols below are the usual way to chart each one:

MNQ follows the same Nasdaq-100 index as NQ, and MES the same S&P 500 index as ES, so each micro chart moves almost exactly like its E-mini. A micro is a smaller-size way to trade the same setup. You can keep NQ and ES on separate charts, each with its own OptiTrade settings.

OptiTrade includes four core strategies. They differ mainly in how a trade ends, which is the first choice to make for intraday futures.

Why most futures day traders start with TP-SL

The TP-SL Strategy is the most complete OptiTrade 2.0 strategy. The moment it gives a Buy or Sell entry, it draws a Stop Loss box and up to four Take Profit lines. As price reaches each Take Profit, part of the trade closes; if price reaches the Stop Loss first, the trade closes for a controlled loss. The Stop Loss is measured in ATR, the average size of the last 14 candles, so it adapts to how fast NQ or ES is moving on your timeframe, and the Risk-Reward ratio sets the targets from that distance. With more than one contract on, the four Take Profits let you scale out in stages. The full walkthrough is on the stop-loss and take-profit indicator page.

Index futures trade almost around the clock, but most day traders only want signals in the hours they are at the screen, often the US cash session. OptiTrade's Trading Times settings handle that:

Setting a day-trading session takes four steps:

1. Double-click the Dashboard (the table in the bottom-right of your chart) to open the OptiTrade settings, and turn on Trading Time Filter.
2. Enter the hours you trade in Trading Session as HHMM-HHMM, and switch off the weekdays you do not trade.
3. Turn on Close Trades at Session End if you want to be flat when your session finishes.
4. Turn on Highlight Non-Trading Times and check that the shaded background matches the hours you meant. That is the quickest way to confirm the session is set the way you want.

The Risk Management section decides how big each trade is. You enter an Account Balance (a manual input; it does not read your broker balance) and pick a Mode:

• Fixed Drawdown, the default, sizes trades from the historical drawdown.
• Fixed Percent sizes from a percentage of the Account Balance.
• Fixed Size uses the exact number of units you request, which suits traders who always trade the same number of contracts.

Futures contracts have their own point values, so a tighter stop can turn the same risk budget into a larger quantity. Check the contract size and your broker's buying power before you send a size as an order, and use Show Trade Sizes to print the exact trade size on each entry label.

Filters that keep an intraday chart clean

• Trading Preference (All, Only Buy or Only Sell) restricts OptiTrade to longs, shorts or both.
• Minimum Candles between Signals (TP-SL) makes OptiTrade wait before it opens a new trade, which reduces over-trading in choppy hours.
• Max Trade Duration (TP-SL) closes a trade at the current price once it has been open for the number of candles you set.

OptiTrade works on every timeframe, from seconds to monthly charts, so you choose the one that fits how you day trade. The setting that matters most is Signal Length: a smaller length gives more, faster signals for active short-term trading, and a bigger length gives fewer, cleaner signals. In Automatic mode you give OptiTrade a range and it tests lengths across it on your chart; in Manual mode it uses exactly the values you type in.

Try a couple of timeframes on the contract you trade and compare them on the Dashboard before you settle on one. Faster scalping setups have their own page: scalping indicator for TradingView.

Bonus indicators for futures context

Your purchase includes 4 bonus indicators on your access page. Three of them are especially handy on futures:

• Analyzer Pro reads RSI, MACD, ADX, Bollinger, EMA 50 and VWAP across up to five timeframes at once, so you can see whether the higher timeframes agree with an entry.
• Volume Pro shows buying versus selling pressure in a panel below the chart, a way to confirm an OptiTrade entry.
• Bounce Zones draws support and resistance zones automatically, which are sensible places to consider a stop just beyond a zone or a target at the next one.

A TradingView alert on the strategy notifies you when an entry, a Take Profit or the Stop Loss fills, through the methods you pick in TradingView, such as app push or email. With Alert Message for set to Manual Trading, the message contains the signal, the ticker and the exact trade size, so you can place the order yourself on any platform: NinjaTrader, MetaTrader, thinkorswim or your broker's app. The steps are in the Signal Alerts guide.

The Pine scripts run on TradingView; they do not install inside NinjaTrader. To have orders placed for you, a connector takes the alert through a webhook and forwards it. In the OptiTrade automation guide, CrossTrade.io links to NinjaTrader, and SignalStack lists BitMEX and Ironbeam for futures. Set Alert Message for to Automatic Trading, paste each connector message into the matching Custom Alert Messages field, and follow the Automatic Trading guide. Test it on a demo account before you switch on live execution, and if your connector can only close a whole position, use one Take Profit.

OptiTrade is delivered as a personal access code. After you subscribe, open your OptiTrade access page, click Copy Code, and paste it into the Pine Editor in your own TradingView account. No invite or TradingView username is needed. The step-by-step setup guide walks through it (use the TradingView website on a computer for the first install).

• OptiTrade runs on TradingView's free plan. A paid plan adds TradingView's own extras, but it is not required.
• Your purchase includes 4 core indicators, plus 4 bonus indicators on your access page.
• OptiTrade doesn't repaint. Once a signal appears on your chart, it stays exactly where it is. More on that: non-repainting indicators explained.

You get access for just $14, or you can choose lifetime access (see pricing). Every payment is covered by our Lifelong Refund Policy: any charge is refundable, with no time limit (Refund Policy). You can cancel anytime with one click from the link in your order confirmation email.

About OptiTrade

OptiTrade is technical-analysis software for TradingView: indicators and strategies that draw buy and sell labels, trend lines and exit levels on your own chart, delivered as Pine Script code you copy from your personal access page at optitrade.shop into TradingView.

OptiTrade (optitrade.shop) is TradingView indicator software. It is not a broker, does not hold or manage your money and does not give investment advice. It is a different business from other companies with similar names. OptiTrade is an independent product and is not made or endorsed by TradingView or CME Group. NQ, ES, MNQ and MES are names of their owners' contracts and are used here only to describe charts.