FAQ

No. No legitimate trading software can promise profits, no risk, all reward, or guaranteed winning trades — and any product that does is misleading you. Fusion is a tool, not a get-rich-quick system, and federal law requires us to be direct about that.

What we can tell you is what Fusion is built for. Fusion is an indicator math engine designed to help you search for an edge: combine indicators in ways that aren’t possible inside stock NinjaTrader, do real math between them, shape the result into signals, validate visually, backtest through NinjaTrader’s Strategy Analyzer, optimize parameters, and walk forward. Whether you find an edge that holds up out of sample is up to you, your data, your discipline, and the markets you trade.

The futures market is genuinely difficult, and regulators require us to remind you that you should only trade with risk capital — money you can afford to lose entirely without affecting your financial security or lifestyle. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Hypothetical and backtested results have inherent limitations and are generally prepared with the benefit of hindsight.

Fusion is provided “as-is” and may contain bugs, edge cases, or produce unexpected results. Our calculations and numerical methods may differ from academic or textbook definitions — you don’t trade textbook math, you trade the final plotted outputs and signals generated by your pipeline. It is entirely your responsibility to visually evaluate those signals, test them relentlessly in simulation, and validate your complete configured workflow before ever risking real capital.

Yes — Fusion is an indicator-math and strategy-authoring tool, and you choose how to use it. Different prop firms have different rules about automation, EAs, and machine learning. Fusion supports manual execution and automated execution, with auto-trade controls you can arm or disarm from the chart panel, so you can match your firm’s policy. Always confirm your firm’s specific rules before using any tool with a funded account.

Fusion is an indicator math engine and signal builder. The user authors all logic, sets all risk parameters, and chooses the execution mode. Fusion can be used as a pure indicator (math and plots only, no signals), as a signal generator (entries and exits visualized for manual execution), as an armed strategy workflow where auto-trade can be turned on or off from the chart panel, or as a fully automated strategy when auto-trade is enabled. When you turn auto-trade off, Fusion does not place orders — it only generates signals you decide whether to act on. AI Studio / ONNX is a fully optional feature that adds an additional signal source; it does not make trading decisions on its own.

Yes. Disable auto-trade in Fusion Strategy and use the Chart Control Panel’s manual long/short buttons. You build your indicator math, you build your signals, and you watch entries and exits paint live on your chart as racing stripes — a discretionary trading aid that shows you when your configured conditions align in real time. When a stripe appears that matches what you’re seeing in price action, you click long or short. You are the one initiating each trade. Fusion’s stops, targets, and trailing logic still apply when you choose to use them, but every entry is your decision. We are actively coordinating with major prop firms to confirm specific compliance positions. Always confirm with your firm before using any third-party tool.

Yes. AI Studio / ONNX is one of many block types and is fully optional. Every other Fusion feature — indicator math, signal processors, math operations, conditions, gates, state machines, Order Flow+ data blocks, and the entire execution framework — works completely without it. If your firm restricts ML, simply don’t use ONNX blocks in your design. The rest of the system is unaffected.

When you wire up entry and exit conditions in Fusion Builder, every signal event renders live on your price chart as a colored “racing stripe” the moment its conditions are met — long entries, short entries, exits, stops, and target hits each have their own visual marker. With auto-trade disabled, no orders are placed. The stripes are simply telling you, in real time, that your configured logic just fired. You stay in full discretionary control: confirm the setup against the broader chart context, your bias, and your firm’s rules, then click the manual long or short button when you decide. This is the cleanest way to use Fusion at firms that restrict automation, because the workflow is the same as using a custom indicator you built yourself: the indicator displays your plots and signals, and you decide whether to place the trade.

Not yet. We are reaching out to major prop firms to confirm compliance positions and to enable coupon-based affiliate relationships where appropriate. Compliance confirmations will be published as we receive them. If you are at a prop firm and want clarity sooner, contact your firm directly with a link to this FAQ — they can confirm whether Fusion with auto-trade disabled, or with auto-trade armed, meets their rules.

The Fusion Indicator System is a visual development platform for NinjaTrader® 8. It lets you build custom indicators, generate trading signals, and run automated strategies by connecting blocks on a canvas — without writing C# code. It consists of six specialized components: Fusion Builder, Fusion Indicator, Fusion Echo, Fusion Signal, Fusion Strategy, and Fusion Strategy Optimizer.

Fusion Indicators for NinjaTrader® requires NinjaTrader Desktop 8.1.6.0 or later on 64-bit Windows 11. Fusion is tested with the current NinjaTrader Desktop release. Most Fusion features do not require Order Flow+. Optional Fusion features that use NinjaTrader® Order Flow+ data, such as Volume Profile or Order Flow+ inputs, require Order Flow+ access in your NinjaTrader account or license. Order Flow+ is a NinjaTrader platform feature and is not included with a Fusion Indicators subscription.

Your subscription includes access through your FusionIndicators.com customer portal to the Fusion System third-party add-on for NinjaTrader® and the separate Fusion ML Trainer Windows installer used by AI Studio. Download Fusion installers only from your FusionIndicators.com customer portal.

The Fusion Indicator System is designed exclusively for NinjaTrader® 8. It is not compatible with NinjaTrader® 7 or any other trading platform.

Follow NinjaTrader’s current published system requirements as the baseline. For Fusion workflows, we recommend a modern multi-core Windows 11 PC, SSD storage, reliable internet for install, licensing, and market data, and 16 GB of RAM for heavier multi-chart, optimization, or AI Studio work. A dedicated graphics adapter is recommended for heavier charting and multi-panel workflows.

Third-party and custom indicators may also work with Fusion, but compatibility depends on how they were built. Because their internal code is not available to us, Fusion cannot detect hidden dependencies or unconventional output patterns.

Compatible — Will Work

• Registers at least one plot output using NinjaTrader®’s standard AddPlot() method. Fusion discovers registered outputs automatically at load time.
• Accepts a standard input series (e.g., Close, Open, or another indicator’s output) via the generic Input property. This allows Fusion to feed data from upstream blocks directly into the indicator.
• Relies only on the primary data source — the main bar series of the chart. No hidden secondary instrument or timeframe loading required.
• Exposes meaningful outputs as registered AddPlot() values — including signal lines, trigger values, or secondary outputs routable through the pipeline.

Incompatible — Will Not Work

• No registered plot outputs — purely visual tools like bar timers or chart drawing tools that output no mathematical values. (Note: Fusion includes its own signal processors that replicate many time and bar-state capabilities.)
• Hidden internal data series — indicators that internally call AddDataSeries() to load their own instruments or timeframes. Fusion cannot detect or manage dependencies it doesn’t know about, which can create data synchronization conflicts.
• Non-series outputs — indicators that store results as plain scalar values instead of indexable series. Fusion needs continuous bar-by-bar data feeds, not single-point snapshots.
• Proprietary dependencies — indicators that rely on internal data providers, custom indicator chaining, or a custom bar type not in NinjaTrader®’s standard BarsPeriodType enum.
• Black box architecture — indicators that calculate values but store results only in internal fields rather than registered plots. If the data isn’t exposed through the standard plot interface, Fusion cannot access it.

For technical C# code examples and full developer requirements, see the Developer Compatibility Guide.

No. Fusion runs natively inside NinjaTrader® 8 as an indicator, signal, and strategy workflow. There is no webhook bridge, external alert service, or third-party relay required between your chart logic and Fusion’s NinjaTrader workflow.

This matters because webhook-based workflows have to send a signal outside the trading platform before it can return as an execution instruction. Fusion does not use that relay path in its native workflow. Fusion logic is evaluated inside NinjaTrader® 8, where the indicator or strategy is running, so there is no external alert service or webhook bridge required between the signal and the NinjaTrader strategy layer.

As with any trading software, final order handling still depends on NinjaTrader, your computer, data feed, broker connection, exchange conditions, and account settings.

Fusion does not require, integrate with, or interfere with TradingView® or any other external charting or alert service. If you use TradingView or another tool separately, that workflow is independent of Fusion.

Yes, with an important distinction. Fusion Indicator can be used as a custom NinjaTrader® indicator in workflows where BloodHound can read compatible third-party indicator plots, DataSeries, or numeric values.

A typical workflow is: build the design in Fusion Builder, copy the SetupID, add Fusion Indicator to the NinjaTrader chart, paste the SetupID into Fusion Indicator, and expose the Fusion plots or values you want BloodHound to read. From there, you can reference those exposed Fusion values inside BloodHound the same way you would reference another compatible custom NinjaTrader indicator.

BlackBird can also work with BloodHound signals and certain custom indicator outputs, depending on how the signal source is configured. That does not mean Fusion is natively integrated with BlackBird, or that a Fusion template is a BlackBird template. Fusion outputs must be exposed in a format the downstream SharkIndicators workflow can read, and the full workflow should be tested carefully in simulation before any live use.

Fusion .fus templates, BloodHound templates, and BlackBird settings are separate file formats from separate products. Fusion is not a native BloodHound or BlackBird template format.

Fusion Indicators is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SharkIndicators. SharkIndicators, BloodHound™, and BlackBird™ are trademarks or trade names of their respective owners.

BloodHound and BlackBird are established NinjaTrader® products with their own workflow. In broad terms, BloodHound is used to build signal logic, while BlackBird is used for trade management and automation around those signals.

Fusion takes a different architectural path. It is built around a visual numeric pipeline where indicator math, signal shaping, plotting, entry logic, exit logic, and strategy risk parameters can be designed in the same Fusion workflow.

Deep numeric pipeline. Fusion passes continuous numeric series between blocks. You can subtract one indicator from another, divide ATR by RSI, normalize a spread, compare instruments, run a correlation block, or route a real numeric value through If/Then/Else logic. Those values can continue downstream into strategy conditions and strategy gates to create entry and exit signals.

Multi-instrument and multi-timeframe logic. Fusion is designed so values from different instruments and timeframes can participate in the same visual pipeline. That makes workflows like comparing NQ and ES values, or combining 1-minute and 5-minute series, part of the native design model.

Instant plotting and fast iteration. Fusion Builder includes its own indicator panel for inspecting the plots and signal behavior your design is producing while you wire the canvas. Fusion Echo is optional, and extends that feedback by letting selected Builder outputs plot on the NinjaTrader® price chart as well. That means you can inspect the same workflow in both places: inside the Builder’s indicator panel and directly on the price chart, without rebuilding the logic in a separate tool.

Signal and strategy configuration in one Fusion workflow. Fusion Builder lets you define the signal logic and the strategy behavior that uses it, including per-entry stop-loss and take-profit configuration, entries-per-direction handling, time-window gates, and other strategy controls.

Risk controls. Fusion Strategy includes strategy-level controls such as daily P&L gates, drawdown and watermark logic, per-trade max-loss checks, account-divergence detection, pre-flight protection validation, and manual/automatic execution controls. The separate Fusion Risk Engine AddOn can add account-level protection outside a single strategy.

Broker-side, exchange-side, and prop-firm-side limits remain separate layers. Fusion risk tools should be treated as part of a defense-in-depth workflow, not a substitute for server-side or firm-side controls.

These notes are not a complete head-to-head benchmark. BloodHound and BlackBird are mature tools with their own strengths, especially for traders already committed to the SharkIndicators workflow. Fusion is different: it emphasizes numeric indicator math, multi-series visual pipelines, instant plotting, fast iteration, on-canvas strategy design, per-strategy and account-level risk controls, and ONNX workflows.

Fusion Indicators is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SharkIndicators. SharkIndicators, BloodHound™, and BlackBird™ are trademarks or trade names of their respective owners.

Canceling stops future renewals and your subscription remains active through the end of the current paid billing period. What you have already built stays yours to use: saved templates, existing SetupIDs, and deployed Fusion Strategy or NT-Strategy-Builder-compiled strategies that call Fusion Indicator continue to work with the version of Fusion you have installed. After your subscription ends, you stop receiving updates, cannot build new templates in Fusion Builder, and cannot modify existing SetupIDs.

Refunds are different: if a refund is issued, access is disabled because the purchase was reversed.

You can manage your subscription through your FusionIndicators.com customer portal. Canceling stops future renewals, and your subscription remains active through the end of the current paid billing period. Renewal payments already processed are non-refundable, so cancel before your next billing date if you do not want to renew. Use the same email address you purchased with so your account, license, and subscription stay connected.

Licensing is tied to your account and tracked per machine. Each single-user license supports up to two registered machines for the same user. Sharing or splitting a license across multiple users is not allowed. Use the same email address you purchased with so your account, license, subscription management, and support requests stay connected. If you replace a computer or need a machine reset, contact support@fusionindicators.com.

Not at launch. Fusion Indicators is available as a paid monthly subscription, with annual billing planned. You can manage your subscription through your FusionIndicators.com customer portal after purchase. Visit the Pricing page at /pricing/ to choose the current subscription option.

There are currently no restrictions on the number of templates or Template Keys you can create during your subscription. We reserve the right to introduce usage limits in the future if we determine that abuse is occurring, but as of now there are no caps in place.

A Template Key is a compact, portable text string that encodes your entire Fusion Builder design — every block, every connection, every parameter. Copy it from Builder and paste it into Fusion Indicator, Fusion Strategy, or share it with another Fusion System user. Your entire indicator design in one string.

A .fus template (Fusion template file) saves your entire Builder wiring layout and your Template Key together in a single file. When you open a .fus template in Fusion Strategy or Fusion Strategy Optimizer, your complete pipeline — all block connections, settings, and Template Key — auto-populates instantly. No copy-pasting Template Keys between tools.

Templates are also used in the Optimizer workflow: configure parameter ranges in Builder’s Optimizer tab, save to a .fus template, then open that template in Fusion Strategy Optimizer and your parameters, ranges, and spacing all load automatically.

Yes — and this is one of the most powerful capabilities in the system. You can add secondary data series to your Builder canvas: a different timeframe of the same instrument (e.g., 5-minute bars on a 1-minute chart), or a different instrument entirely (e.g., VIX, TICK, ADV, DECL, or NQ on an ES chart). Use these series in your math and logic blocks just like any other input.

Fusion Echo lets you plot your Builder output on the price chart and in a separate indicator panel with a one-click toggle — within the same chart window. When displayed on the price chart, your indicator values are price-scale synchronized, so you can directly see how your indicator values relate to actual price action. The panel with a one-click toggle shows your normalized or differently-scaled outputs. You cannot use Echo to plot on an entirely separate chart window — it works within one chart, bridging the price chart and a panel.

Yes. You can have multiple instances of Fusion Builder paired with Fusion Echo on the same chart. Each Builder/Echo pair is color-hash synchronized — the color you assign to your Builder instance matches its paired Echo instance automatically — making it easy to track which output belongs to which design at a glance.

Fusion Signal has nothing to do with alerts or sounds. It is a visual strategy simulator — while you’re building your logic in Fusion Builder, Signal lets you see approximately how your strategy will perform. It paints buy and sell signals, stop losses, trailing stops, profit targets, flatten conditions, and ghost signals directly on your chart as you work.

It uses a dual-panel display: racing stripes on your price chart show signal events on price, while the full histogram and all signal details (entries, stops, targets) render in a separate panel — keeping your Builder canvas free for indicator math.

Important: Fusion Signal is a visual approximation only. Live execution can always behave differently — even when traded manually. Always run a full backtest and test in simulation mode before deploying any strategy live.

Fusion Strategy is the execution engine. It takes your visual Builder design and runs it on a live NinjaTrader® chart — supporting manual trading with auto-trade disabled, or automated trading when auto-trade is enabled. With auto-trade disabled, Fusion Strategy generates signals only and lets you place orders manually through the Chart Control Panel’s long/short buttons. With auto-trade enabled, Fusion Strategy executes orders, manages stops, and tracks positions automatically based on your configured logic. You can also backtest on-chart for a quick sanity check, or run a full backtest and simulation through NinjaTrader®’s Strategy Analyzer.

On-chart backtest note: Quick chart backtesting only tests data currently loaded on the chart — making it easy to accidentally curve-fit a strategy. Always run a full Strategy Analyzer backtest before going live.

Fusion Strategy Optimizer is specifically for NinjaTrader®’s Strategy Analyzer optimization. It is a mirror of Fusion Strategy, but its purpose is finding optimal parameters — not live trading. In Builder’s Optimizer tab, you choose which parameters to optimize and set their spacing. Save that to a .fus template, open it in Fusion Strategy Optimizer, and everything auto-populates ready to run parameter sweeps.

When auto-trade is disabled, Fusion Strategy becomes a discretionary trading dashboard. Your signals still paint live as racing stripes on the chart and as histogram events in Fusion Signal — but no orders are placed automatically. The Chart Control Panel adds manual LONG and SHORT buttons that you click when you decide to enter. Pre-flight protection validation still runs (Fusion will block a manual entry if your protective stop would land on the wrong side of price), and your configured stops, targets, and trailing logic still apply once you’re in the trade. You stay in full control; Fusion handles the order plumbing and risk discipline.

Yes. Fusion Indicator can be used inside NinjaTrader’s Strategy Builder as a custom indicator. Most users won’t need this path — Fusion Strategy is the better tool for the full Fusion experience — but it’s available because traders expect it to be possible.

How it works. Build your indicator or signal logic in Fusion Builder, copy the Template Key from your design, then add Fusion Indicator inside NinjaTrader’s Strategy Builder as the custom indicator. The Template Key is the portable code form of your Fusion setup; in NinjaScript it’s passed through the SetupID field.

You can reference Fusion Indicator’s exposed values — your custom plots, thresholds, crossovers, comparisons, or resolved strategy signal — in normal Strategy Builder conditions, the same way you would with any other custom indicator.

Reading the resolved strategy signal. If you build full strategy logic in Fusion Builder using Strategy Conditions, Gates, and Entry blocks, Fusion’s resolved strategy state can be exposed as numeric values such as +1 for long-state, −1 for short-state, 0 for no-state, and 4 for a long/short conflict state. Most NinjaTrader Strategy Builder examples should compare for +1 and −1; the 0 and 4 states are mainly useful for more advanced routing or diagnostics. The execution mode — live, simulated, or backtest — is whatever Strategy Builder is configured for, and is fully controlled by the user.

Why Fusion Strategy is usually the better path. Fusion Strategy was built specifically for Fusion’s strategy graph and includes an execution layer Strategy Builder does not provide: the Chart Control Panel, auto-trade arm/disarm, manual long/short buttons for fully discretionary trading, account-sync tools, panic flatten, live P&L display with privacy masking, external profit-target wiring and managed protective-stop wiring, pre-flight protection validation, account-divergence detection, integrated risk tools, and startup trading modes for live, sim, historical review, and backtest workflows.

Fusion Strategy also handles advanced data-series workflows better, including volumetric and Order Flow+ style use cases. Fusion Indicator has previously worked with volumetric data through custom data-series handling, but the recommended path for volumetric strategy work is Fusion Strategy because it was built to manage those workflows more directly.

Short version:

• Use NinjaTrader Strategy Builder if you specifically want a standalone NinjaScript strategy file that calls Fusion Indicator at runtime.
• Use Fusion Strategy if you want the full Fusion execution system — richer runtime controls, managed exits, manual trading buttons, startup modes, and better support for advanced strategy workflows.

Note: NinjaTrader Strategy Builder does not load .fus template files directly. Use the Template Key.

After Your Subscription Ends. Existing deployed templates, Template Keys, Fusion Strategies, and NinjaTrader Strategy Builder strategies that call Fusion Indicator may continue to run with the installed version, subject to the license terms and technical limitations described in the Terms of Service. A subscription provides continued access to Fusion Builder, updates, new features, new blocks, and compatibility work for future NinjaTrader changes. If a third-party platform change, system change, refund, or license limitation affects access, those cases are governed by the legal terms.

AI Studio brings machine learning into the NinjaTrader workflow as an optional capability, and it is controlled by the user end to end — not a black box.

Your subscription includes the Fusion ML Trainer, a separate Windows installer that runs locally on your machine. The workflow is:

1. Choose what you’re modeling. You pick the training target — for example, future return over N bars (regression), an ATR barrier race (which side hits an N-ATR move first within a window), a directional classification, a volatility regime label, or a signed/unsigned magnitude target. You decide what question you want the model to answer.
2. Choose your features. The model is trained on the blocks already on your Fusion canvas — your indicators, your math operations, your signal processors, your custom pipeline. Feature engineering is whatever you wired up in Builder. Nothing is hidden.
3. Choose your algorithm family. AI Studio supports up to 17 algorithm choices across regression and classification — gradient boosted trees, LightGBM, XGBoost, CatBoost, random forest variants, regression families, and others. You select which ones to train and compare. You can train multiple algorithms in parallel against the same target and rank them by the metric you care about.
4. Train locally. Training runs on your own Windows machine through the Fusion ML Trainer — your data does not leave your computer. You can hyper-tune within the trainer.
5. Review and select. AI Studio ranks trained models by metrics (profit factor, R-squared, classification accuracy, others depending on target type) so you can compare them honestly. You decide which model — if any — is good enough to use.
6. Load it back as a block. The chosen model exports as an ONNX file. You add an ONNX block in Fusion Builder, point it at the file, and the block automatically wires the inputs the model was trained on. From there it plots like any other block, can feed conditions, gates, or state machines, and can feed manual or automated execution workflows — your choice.

The user authors all logic, picks the target, picks the algorithm, validates the results, and decides how the output is used. The ONNX block is an additional numeric model-output block, not a decision-maker. Machine learning does not guarantee trading results, and every model should be reviewed, backtested, and tested in simulation before any live use. Models can curve-fit easily on small datasets — train across multiple market regimes and validate on data the model has never seen before trusting any output.

At runtime, the ONNX block reads values from its wired inputs each bar, runs them through the trained model, and produces a numeric output that plots on your chart like any other indicator value. From there it behaves like any other plot in the Fusion pipeline — you can threshold it through conditions, gate it through state machines, route it to Fusion Echo, or use it as one factor among many in a confluence strategy. It does not place trades on its own.

Absolutely. AI Studio is one of many block types and is fully optional. The indicator math engine, signal processors, math operations, conditions, gates, state machines, Order Flow+ data blocks, and the entire Fusion Strategy execution layer all work completely without ONNX blocks. Many users will use Fusion purely as an advanced visual indicator and signal builder and never train a model. That is a fully supported, first-class workflow.

That depends on the prop firm and how you use it. With auto-trade disabled, the ONNX block is just another plot on your chart that you visually evaluate before clicking manual long or short — the same way you would evaluate any other indicator. With auto-trade enabled, it becomes part of an automated pipeline.

Different firms classify this differently. If your firm restricts AI or ML, simply don’t use ONNX blocks in your design. If your firm allows automation but is unclear on ML specifically, ask them directly. We are working with major prop firms to clarify their positions and will publish confirmations as we receive them.