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Zac White, Co-Founder of SharkIndicators, will be monitoring this thread so that he may answer any questions that you post here relating to SharkIndicator's products and services.
Please keep in mind that some customer service/technical support issues are best handled through proper channels at SharkIndicators, and not here in this thread.
SharkIndicators has been involved in the NinjaTrader Ecosystem since 2011, providing tools - like BloodHound and BlackBird - that help traders be more productive and in control of their own trade systems, without needing to write code. Thousands of users and 8 years later, we are proud of the work we've done in benefit of the trading community.
Zac White is a co-founder and Product Specialist with SharkIndicators. He brings nearly 20 years of trading experience and a wide technical background consisting of civil engineering, software programming, and IT logistics to the table. Zac has assisted countless traders to model their trading systems, allowing them to backtest and auto-trade their systems.
Zac runs the weekly training workshops for BloodHound and BlackBird, helping traders get the most out of these powerful tools.
Feel free to ask any questions below and we'll do our best to get them answered.
The futures io "AMA" (Ask Me Anything) series is by invitation only.
Recently stumbled over a vendor that has programmed an indicator/strategy for ninjatrader to combine NT7 indicators, with severeral integrated logics, to half or fully automate trading ideas. They allow unlimited trial for demo trading, so you only pay …
#1 The latest release (8.1.14.18) supports a first draft for Tick Replay (T/R), but there are a few things we want to work a little easier before we officially announce it. e.g. In order to get a T/R indicator (a guest indicator) to load T/R data you need to select the solver(s) that references a T/R indicator and open BH's Select Indicator window to force the T/R indicator to load T/R data. Pressing F5 on the chart is not currently forcing the T/R indicators to load T/R data, and that is how we would like it to work. And, before anyone asks... there is no ETA on when that will be.
#2 Just for clarification for those who don't know, BloodHound is an indicator, and indicators can not be run in the Optimizer. As for Raven and BlackBird (strategies) running BH templates, the proper answer is NT needs to support dynamically changing property grids. e.g. The MACD will only have 3 input properties, Fast, Slow, and Smooth periods. The MACD will never have a 4th or 5th input period. If it ever does, it will not be the MACD any more, it will be a new indicator with a different name. Currently, NT is designed to support "standard" indicators which have fix/unchanging input properties. As for BH, the indicators you decide to use within it change all the time, and thus Ninja's property grid would need to change all the time to accommodate all the different indicators and their different input properties being used inside any given BH system. It has been mentioned from time to time in the workshops that Jeremy has some ideas for a possible work-around to NT's static property grid, but it is just an idea not a known solution. I'd like to reiterate again, as I've done in the workshops, testing this work-around idea will be very time consuming and thus the risk is very high that all that time spent (about 9 months or more) becomes a huge waist of time if it doesn't work out. Later this summer and in the next year to come, we have several new features for BH and BB (BlackBird) that we know don't run the risk of being wasted time, and those features will always have priority over optimization. As much as we would love to have Raven & BB optimizer compatible, because it would make BH a much stronger product of course, I just don't want to get your hopes up.
Thanks,
Zac
Am I able to use BlackBird (without Blackhound) to fully automatize Trade Signal plots with indicators i.e. from Lizardtrader (Harry) like the "AuctionBars"?
If so, is the BlackBird able to stop trading for the day after a certain target or loss is reached?
Yes, absolutely. BlackBird (BB) is built to read trade signal plots or Series<T> from other 3rd party vendors.
I can't speak to each indicator out there, or guarantee someone else's indicator. To put it very simply, SharkIndicators can not guarantee someone else work, even companies listed on our Vendors site, although we do work closely with those companies to make sure their indicator work correctly. What I can say is, as long as that indicator has a "trade signal" plot or Series<T> then it should work fine. Typically, programmers will use a +1 value to indicate a buy signal, a -1 value for a sell, and zero for no signal. For more technical info the documentation can be found here... https://www.sharkindicators.com/documentation/blackbird/order-settings/trade-signals/#indicator-based-signal
Harry is a great programmer, so I image that is what he did.
BlackBird is a trade manager. Without a signal source there is no "automated strategies". As with all custom coded strategies, internally there is indicator type code that calculates the trade signals. That is why BB has a trade Signal section, so that you can plug-in whatever signal source you want. Either BloodHound or a 3rd party/custom indicator. BB is designed to be as modular as possible.
If you don't want to use BloodHound for the trade signal source, then you can create your own custom indicators to provide signals to BB, and yes, then you have an automated strategy to backtest in Ninja's S/A.
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
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It is my pleasure to welcome Jeremy Tang @ SharkIndicators for our 382nd webinar event, on Tuesday, April 28th @ 4:30 PM Eastern US.
The title for the event is "Lessons from a Veteran NinjaScript Developer", and bullet points include:
- Watch master developer Jeremy Tang code a NinjaScript indicator from scratch
- Tips and tricks on how to structure your indicator and make it organized and customizable
- How to develop your trading system using an alternative that requires no coding
- In depth Q&A, bring all your questions!
Ultimate is the version with all features enabled. BloodHound has three versions, depending on your system complexity needs. Disclosure: This page is a purchase page, but it bullet points what features the Standard, Pro, and Ultimate have included.... https://www.sharkindicators.com/products/buy-bloodhound/
At the bottom of the page there is a Frequently Asked Questions section that we get asked a lot as well.
As for future updates, this page explains our Maintenance Period policy and how updates work... https://www.sharkindicators.com/documentation/maintenance-period/
Thanks everyone.
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
Manta, Ecuador
Experience: Advanced
Platform: My own custom solution
Trading: Emini Futures
Posts: 49,348 since Jun 2009
Thanks: 32,023 given,
96,562
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I want to thank @SharkIndicators for sponsoring our June Journal Challenge!
They are giving away free fully-featured BloodHound licenses to ANY member who asks for one in the event thread. The licenses are fully-featured, but will expire on Nov 15 2020.
Zac, would it be possible in future updates to provide a way to group solvers together on the board and sort of "bundle label" them?
I know you can label the individual solvers and nodes but for example, the template I attached is split into two main groups and it would be awesome to be able to highlight the two individual groups and then have a text box that will display whatever the user puts in. That way in a glace I know that this top group does this, this and that, and the bottom group does that, this and this.
In my head I know what they do but for templates I made even a week ago, sometimes it gets tricky to remember my steps, even when I label each node individually. I think most users would appreciate this one.
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Hi Fibbee,
Yes, that type of idea will be available in BloodHound 2.0. BH 2.0 requires the code to be completely rewritten from the ground up to accommodate this idea and other new features we want to add. I mention this, because it will be many years before BH 2.0 is available. The idea of grouping nodes will work something like this... A group of nodes will be built in their own Logic template. That Logic template's output can be accessed via a node in other logic templates. This will be handy for those who like to use the same filtering logic over and over again in many of their systems. Build it in one location, and then access it via a node in any other logic templates.
We also plan to add sticky notes that can be drawn on the green logic board, so you can include notes for yourself.
For now, what you can do is use the notes area for each Logic template. Click on the blue triangle next to the logic template Name to open it.
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
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Is there some sort of portfolio trading capability within your product, that lets you make trade decisions based on multiple active positions/correlation across several concurrent positions?
Thanks for the opportunity to try out Bloodhound! It's working great! I've been able to get my about half of my strategy programmed using Bloodhound and now want to try BlackBird to see how managing the stop losses and profits affects the outcomes.
I tried using BlackBird tonight for the first time and it says I have 13 days left on my trial, although I didn't register for a free trial of BlackBird separately. Is that because the Journal Bloodhound Trial gave me 30 days of the BlackBird trial? Is there a way to extend the 13 days so I have more time to use it?
Good question. BloodHound doesn't produce indicator code. Instead, you tell it what conditions to look for, and it displays signals on the chart, in the form of green and red plots and stripes. It's a great way to focus your attention on the bars in which your indicator rules are met.
Then you can use those signals to enter trades automatically for you. Or simply use them for helpful information on the chart.
The rules you create in BloodHound are saved to a .bht file. You can share this file with other BloodHound users, much like sharing a Word document.
Hello tradepips,
Our business model is quite different than the typical vendor who is selling a trading system for several thousands of dollars. SharkIndicators is a software company, not a turnkey trading system company. Our software tools are very competitively priced as compared to the trading industry, because of that. Therefore, we do not need to turn to high sales tactics such as requiring registration first before anyone can download our software installer. You probably installed all of the SharkIndicators products when you ran the installer, and started up BlackBird (to have a look-see. Who doesn't?) a day or two afterwards which started the Full Trial period.
There are several places that point you to a trial signup, mainly so we know how customers are finding out about us (very important for any business). And also, to announce webinars from vendors of ours who may be offering a bundled discount on BloodHound, because we only offer discounts twice a year due to our low price point. We don't believe in (or like them our self) blasting out emails that claim Only 24hrs Left to get 33% Off. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
I have a suggestion to @SharkIndicators and I will try to explain here. Hope I can express myself correctly as english is not my "default" language..
I would like to see the capability of BH retrieve data from the signals it generates.
In other words would be something like for every signal BH generates (whatever logic is selected) the OHLCV of that bar is retrieved to be used latter, so, I think it has to be a public/published Dataseries.
This way, Blackbird could read/access those values and use them as parameters (i.e. stops).
As an example, simple put Price Inflection Solver on logic board, then put an And node and a simple ema200 as a filter then directly connect to Result solver. (PriceInflectionSolver, AND node, Ema200_ComparissonSolver), above ema200 only longs allowed below only shorts.
Then, in Blackbird, using BH as a signal, entry a market order with an initial placement for stop at 20ticks. As the trade goes in our favor, move the stop using a trailing stop rule to use data from BH_Signals, for instancce: High-of-previus-signal.
In NinjaScript would be something like this (for clarification purposes)
BHSignal[0].High // represents the high of the bar of the most recent signal generated from Bloodhoud.
BHSignal[1].High // one signal before the most recent, BHSignal[0]
BHSignal[2].High // two signals before the most recent, BHSignal[0]
and so on..
That would be amazing!
As BH and BB are tools from Si, we dont have the risk of Ninja breaking code on future updates! Would add lots of value integrating both products, enhancing the comunication between them!
Hello MrTrader,
Thanks for the suggestionl. Your NinjaScript example explains it very well. I have heard of a similar request before.
We have a centralized place were traders can provide feedback to us, which allow us to track them better. Also, other traders only have one place to visit, to see if a suggestion/request has already been submitted. Please submit your suggestion here... https://www.sharkindicators.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?47-Feedback-for-Shark-Software. While you are there you can vote on other trader's suggestions as well. This really helps us understand what the community wants.
Good question. To get BlackBird to enter a trade automatically, you would need to provide it a signal. Thankfully, this can be done with our other product BloodHound. You would tell BloodHound to look for conditions on a higher timeframe chart, and produce a signal when your condition(s) are met. Then use that signal in BlackBird to enter a trade.
You didn't specify what the actual condition would be (what should that Bollinger Band be doing, for a signal to appear). You can contact our support if you have a specific question like that, or see if you can find a workshop recording that can help - the search box on that page is good to try too.
We also offer 1-on-1 training for an hourly rate, in case you want to speed up the learning process. Contact us directly for more info on that.
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
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Hi guys,
It is my pleasure to welcome Jeremy Tang and Zac White @ SharkIndicators for our 405th webinar event, on Thursday, November 19th @ 4:30 PM Eastern US.
The title for the event is "Backtesting Made Easy", and bullet points include:
- How to beat 90% of traders by doing this one thing
- How to know what you’re actually trading will make you money
- Why the best traders validate their systems
- Live Q&A with backtesting experts!
I have already purchased both bloodhound and blackbird. I am considering purchasing JigSaw. If I execute an order through the JigSaw DOM, would blackbird running on a chart be able to notice that order and run my management algorhythm once in the trade? I am trying to determine if I would need to execute the trade in a NinjaChart or if can also use the JigSaw Dom. Its my understanding that JigSaw charges $50/monthly to process orders through their DOM.
I am primarily interested in Jigsaw for their education, but I will be learning their tools as I go, If can find some use of their tools I wanted to understand how both of these might work
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Do you have any Black Friday special deals on Lifetime Maintenance Fees on Blackbird and Bloodhound combo? If you do, can you please send me the link? It is not the software or indicator price that hurts any traders' bottom line; it is the maintenance fees. Trading is becoming more and more expensive. It is becoming more expensive to maintain than small brick and mortar businesses.
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Go ahead and send an email to support@sharkindicators.com from the email address you used to purchase. We'll check what options are available for you. Generally, to upgrade to a Lifetime of updates costs the equivalent of 4 years of updates. So you get to decide if that's worth it for your long-term plans.
On a side note, thanks to everyone who purchases the maintenance each year (most do). It allows us to keep your original purchase lower, and it's a huge motivator for Jeremy to continue improving the product, both under-the-hood as well as adding new features. We're finally able to start working on real new features now that NT8 is working well (we won't speak of the dark days of early NT8 development).
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I see that the Black Friday deal for both Bloodhound and Blackbird combo deal is $1,495, which is a great deal. However, buyer beware, lifetime maintenance is fairly close to the Black Friday deal price. The annual subscription is 1/4 of lifetime maintenance fees. Consider to actual cost before anyone makes the decision to purchase.
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Yeah the maintenance only applies to updates. After the first year, if you're happy with the version that was out at that time, you can keep using it at no further cost. Most people get updates 1 year at a time, but the Lifetime Upgrade is available for those who want all future updates.
Thanks for bringing this up. It's always a good idea to know these things before purchasing products (from us or anyone).
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
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Are you saying the software stops working if you don't pay the maintenance? I would be shocked if that were the case. Normally in the business world, maintenance is just that -- maintenance, updates and support. But you can forego it if you don't want any of those things.
Many people use historical data when first learning to use BloodHound, so in most cases this isn't an issue. Feel free to download the 30-day trial and get going, and if you're ready to buy in December, our regular prices are still low by industry standards.
Black Friday has been a great option for people who have watched our stuff for weeks (or months or years) and decided to pull the trigger and start trading their system ideas.
Your description of "maintenance" is exactly correct. It's optional access to updates. In theory a major NinjaTrader update could break the version you're using, but we haven't seen that happen in a long time.
Regarding support, you don't need to be current on maintenance. Our tech guy Mike will answer support emails regardless.
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YES and NO. It won't work with any templates that were built with a newer version of Bloodhound and Blackbird. In addition, basically, you are stuck with the old version. Hence, if any NinjaTrader updates or upgrades start to affect your old version of Bloodhound and Blackbird, the only way to get it going again is to pay for the maintenance. Many gurus or prebuilt templates use the most up to date version of the software; therefore, it won't work. At best, you will be stuck with the old system or the system you created using the old version.
That is why Shark Indicators gives a huge discount for their software but never on the maintenance. That is where they make their pure profit. No affiliate fees, sales commissions, and discounts; absolutely pure profits.
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Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
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Posts: 49,348 since Jun 2009
Thanks: 32,023 given,
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I would disagree on the assessment that is "pure profit", there are probably a lot of costs involved behind the scenes.
Still, I appreciate the details and it's good info. I still think it's a normal business operation. Other platforms charge an ongoing monthly fee, or NinjaTrader for example offers a lifetime option -- just like Shark seems to do.
Seems totally reasonable to me, but it's good that everyone be informed prior to any purchase.
I personally don't mind the maintenance fee. It is nominal if making money trading. It also insures these guys are able to thrive and continue to develop the product. It is in my interest as a user they make a profit. It takes a bit to learn but once do I have found it to be a great investment. What might take a month or two to use a programmer with all the back and forth now takes me a few days or even hours. Also much cheaper than hiring someone every time you need something coded.
"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
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I have been trading since 1998. For most of my career, I was trying to become a good trader, a consistently profitable trader. I realized one thing, there is no such thing as a consistently profitable trader. No one in the world accomplished it. It is just like looking for a holy grail. I quit trying to be a consistently profitable trader and became a business person. Trading is my business. As soon as I changed my whole concept of trading, everything became much comfortable and became so-called "profitable" on annual basis.
I stop trading based on the intraday chart. I take daily and look for the price level that I want to buy. I do this with all of SP500 stocks with weekly options as they are most liquid. I hardly trade weekly options; it is just a filter to find liquid stocks. I also trade FX and all the futures based on a daily chart. Just like businesses prepare for seasons like Christmas and other popular days that happen every year, I look for seasonal along with a price that I am confident I can sell at a higher price.
Trading is a business. Just as a business, you can only control your cost including all the fees and charges along with the cost of acquisition. You can't control your profit. You just have to do your research to come up with the best price others may willing to pay you. You have to work for 5-8 hours a day. It is a full-time job. If someone tells you otherwise, he/she is probably not telling you the truth.
I spent a good $250,000 on education, indicators, trading rooms, newsletters, alert services, mentoring, and so on. I spent 100 hours per week researching, backtesting, trading, and all the little things that you can ever think of. almost 20 years of looking for a holy grail, no one makes money on a daily basis, not weekly, not monthly, not even quarterly. Only less than 10% of all fund managers make more than 10% return a year, historically. That probably equates to less than 0.1% for all traders and wannabes.
Control the cost. Control yourself as you are the biggest risk. Don't think about profit. Think about not losing money.
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Yes, of course control your cost. $250k yikes. But there are some tools worth investing in. Sharkindicator Blackbird and Bloodhound are just tools. But value I get way offsets cost. I would disagree you can't be consistently profitable trading. It's not easy but it can be quite profitable. If you only think about losing money you won't make money. Money Management is extremely important and losses need to be managed but you also have to manage profits.
"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
NT does not allow strategies to manage orders executed externally of the strategy. Thus, the answer is no. You would need to use BlackBird's chart trader or its Dynamic Planner to enter a trade. If you have more questions on this, please email our support, as this is not the appropriate place to support a vendor's product.
Side note: Jigsaw has not approached us yet, so we do not know if their indicators work for system building (i.e. work with BloodHound).
Correct. This is how all software works. Older versions of any software don't have the features/settings that the newer version of the software has, thus opening a newer file version within an older software version is going to break something.
Not true. You have two options:
#1 Purchase a Maintenance Extension when you feel it's necessary. e.g. If you go two years without updates, when you do purchase a Maintenance Extension you get three years for the price of 1. You get the previous two years of new features/capabilities, which is two years of programming cost for FREE, and the next year of updates which the cost pays for.
#2 Purchase the lifetime of Maintenance Extensions versions and be done with it.
NT should not be breaking things. That's on them. Why is it the vendor's responsibility to clean up NT's mistakes? From the vendor's stand point NT should be cleaning up the broken mess they caused. Yes, it stinks that customers get caught in the middle. Customers should petitioning NT to fix the issues they caused, not the vendors.
TraderTool, I see you live in the L.A. area. How much does skilled labor cost in southern CA? The Maintenance Extension cost goes to pay the ongoing programmer wages. It goes to pay the ongoing documentation person's wages. It goes to pay the ongoing free workshop training person's wages.
Labor is expensive in the U.S. We do not out source to cheaper countries. We are skilled U.S. and Canadian labor. To put this into perspective, the BH Maintenance Extension cost is about one days wages(probably less) of lower end skilled labor cost in the L.A. area. That's one days wages for a year of labor. BloodHound and BlackBird are different from 97% of the indicators and strategies that are out there. Most indicators never change. Once they are created, the programmer costs end. Maybe there are one or two fixes after it is released, but basically the programmer costs come to an end. After that it is all profit for that vendor. As for BH & BB, we will always be improving it and adding new features to it. What that translates into is continuous labor costs. There are a few other vendors that do the same, and if you check, you will see those indicators are more costly due to a monthly or annual leasing cost. That continuous labor cost is not given away for free by anyone. The ones that did went out of business or soon will. NT is in a far superior position when you choose to purchase their software outright(vs. leasing monthly). They have 100% of all customers. Vendors get a much much smaller percentage of the NT customer base, thus our pricing has to be higher. Its simple supply & demand curve economics.
[COMMENTARY]
This is mainly applicable to new traders. If you think our software is to expensive you probably shouldn't be trading. If you are making around $50k/yr. or less, depending on your areas cost of living, you probably should not be trading, but rather contributing what disposable income you have to a retirement account. Good trading software is expensive. As the various U.S. Federal agency disclaimers state, "Risk capital is money that can be lost without jeopardizing ones financial security or lifestyle. Only risk capital should be used for trading and only those with sufficient risk capital should consider trading." That should be extended to purchasing trading software as well !
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YES. Skill labor is not cheap. That is why I paid a hefty sum of money to make the purchase. You are trying to double-dipping with that SKILLS. Besides, those high paying $15/hour (minimum in CA) quality work often times sucks compared to $5/hour programmers I find in Fiverrs. The place and quality or the price and quality equation is never a 100% solid number to begin your calculations anyway.
One more thing, if I want the headache of paying rent, utilities, labor, and so on, I wouldn't even begin trading. I would continue to trying to run a business. Most of us trade because somehow it is easier than going through a medical school, law school, or running a successful business.
Bottom line is that it is okay to charge a reasonable fee for maintenance. However, it became clear to me that the real profit maker for your company is the maintenance fees. You never place the maintenance fees on sale or special like other products. I wish I would have known before I made the purchase. You should post it right under the sales price of your product how much annual or life maintenance fee is for each product. I probably didn't buy it or thinking about paying for the maintenance fee before I make a purchase.
I want people to clearly understand material facts regarding the important purchase they are going to make.
for suggestions by other customers. Go to... 
