Building a Futures Strategy by Hand
In this tutorial we're going to do what the Trading Mindset page said traders should do: observe a pattern, form a testable rule, and actually test it. No hand-waving. No "this setup has a 90% win rate" nonsense. Just a concrete strategy we'll build from scratch, backtest with real historical data, and then iterate on — honestly.
External Indicators (Open Interest)
The built-in indicators (RSI, MACD, EMA, Bollinger, …) operate on the candles you're already trading. But sometimes the most useful information is outside the candle data — order book imbalance, options skew, on-chain flows, sentiment scores, and (the example for this tutorial) futures open interest.
External Indicators (Fear & Greed)
The Open Interest tutorial walked through the mechanics of the External Indicator dialog using a Binance endpoint. This is the same flow but for a different kind of provider — the alternative.me Fear & Greed Index, a widely-cited daily sentiment score for the crypto market.
External Signals (TradingView TA)
The two earlier tutorials wired numeric data from a JSON API into BrighterTrading as an External Indicator. This one shows the other side of the platform: External Signals — boolean / directional events posted from outside, used as triggers in your strategies.
Multi-Timeframe & Cross-Asset Strategy
The earlier tutorials kept things simple: one chart, one timeframe, one symbol. Real strategies often look at more than that — using a higher timeframe to identify a trend regime, then a lower timeframe to time entries; or using one asset's behavior to inform trades on a different asset.
Formations as a Circuit Breaker
The earlier tutorials encoded trade ideas in indicators — RSI, MACD, OI, sentiment readings. This one teaches a different pattern: drawing a chart formation by hand, and using it as a safety net rather than as a primary entry signal.