Each market sits in its own range: 0 % at its low of the day, 100 % at its high. At a new high of the day the numbers make it exact: the box shows ES at 100 %, and NQ under 100 % has not made its own. A new low works the same way round.
| On your chart | Data series | Overlay Bands |
|---|---|---|
| Another market on the same chart no second chart to watch | ✓ | ✓ |
| The same read at any zoom placed by its day, not by what is on screen | ✓ | |
| Your candles stay on top the bands lie behind them, see-through | ✓ | |
| Up to three markets each in its own color | ✓ | ✓ |
| The read | ||
| Its real price and the distance beside the band, in your market’s points | ✓ | |
| Exact range position of each market in a box: 0 % at the low, 100 % at the high | ✓ | |
| Opposite movers flipped VX against ES, the dollar against the euro | ✓ | |
| Set up | ||
| Partner and contract picked for you NQ on ES, silver on gold, any future | ✓ | |
| Built to be checked | ||
| Past bars stay as they were no repaint: a finished bar keeps its band | ✓ | |
| A note when a market is missing not on your feed: no band, and it says why | ✓ | |
In short: NinjaTrader 8, a second or minute chart, and data for the markets you add. That is all SMT Overlay Bands needs.
Each market you add comes from your own data feed: most futures feeds carry CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX together, some sell CFE, ICE or Eurex separately. Tick, range and volume charts are not supported yet; on them the indicator says so instead of drawing.
NQ’s real price, and how far ES would have to move to sit where NQ sits.
The full bar, only the close, or one block per bar, behind your candles.
Range positions, yours beside them, and the distance, in a corner that never moves.
Twenty-four markets in the list, any other by typing it, or Automatic.
Try every setting free for 14 days, then keep it for good or pay by the month.
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Four ways to read the bands. None of them is a signal; the entries, the stops and the discipline are still yours.
Your market prints a new high. Is the NQ band up there with it, or lagging below? A market that does not follow is worth knowing about before you buy the breakout.
When one band keeps sitting above your price, that market is higher in its own range than yours. Context for your bias, not a signal.
Pick VX and switch on Flip on an ES chart: when stocks rise and volatility does not fall with them, the band shows it at once.
Silver on gold, bonds on notes, euro on pound, corn on soybeans. The partner is picked for you on every futures chart.
Comparing closely correlated markets, like ES and NQ, is often called intermarket analysis; ICT traders call a disagreement between them at a high or a low SMT divergence. The bands show it without a ratio and without signals.
Every market comes through your own connection, so your feed must carry it. Most carry CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX together; some sell CFE, ICE or Eurex separately.
Any size under a day, Heikin-Ashi included. Not tick, range, volume or Renko charts yet, and not daily charts: there it shows a note instead of drawing.
It only reads prices and never touches your orders or account. It needs NinjaTrader 8 on a desktop PC; the web and mobile apps do not run indicators.
No arrows, no alerts, no sounds, no orders. It shows where the markets sit; the decision stays yours.
Each band moves as its market trades. Nothing is averaged unless you switch Smoothing on.
The 14 days start the first time it loads on a chart. No card, nothing charged. After that it stops working until you buy it or start the monthly plan.
Can’t find the answer to your question? Email us, we answer fast.
It shows what SMT traders compare, and you read it: it draws no arrows and sends no alerts. When your market makes a higher high and the other band stays under its own last high, you see the split on your candles. At a new high of the day the info box makes it exact: your market reads 100 %, and the other market under 100 % has not made its own. Whether that is worth trading is your read.
No. A bar’s band is worked out once, when the bar has finished in your market and in the other one, and it never changes after that. Only the newest bar or two can still move, until they have finished in every market. Reloading the chart draws the same picture, except where NinjaTrader’s own reloaded bars differ from the bars it built live.
Yes. Add SMT Overlay Bands to your ES chart and Automatic draws NQ on it: a see-through band behind your candles, placed in its own range, with NQ’s real price and the distance beside it. On an NQ chart it draws ES; on MES it draws NQ, on MNQ it draws ES. Set Market 2 and Market 3 to Automatic and YM and RTY join it, or pick any other market there.
No, and we won’t pretend it is. It shows where your markets sit against each other right now. That is context, not a forecast. The decisions stay yours.
Second and minute charts shorter than a day, including Heikin-Ashi on a second or minute base, where it measures your market on its real bars. Tick, range and volume charts are not supported yet: on them the indicator shows a note instead of drawing. Tick Replay must be off for the chart, or every other market would be replayed tick by tick.
It runs on NinjaTrader 8 desktop and takes every market from your own connection, so it works with any feed that carries the market. It only reads prices and never touches your orders or account, so a prop, funded or personal account makes no difference. Your data plan must include each market you add.
A term from ICT trading for two closely correlated markets that disagree at a high or a low: ES makes a new high and NQ does not, or ES makes a new low while NQ holds above its own. Traders who use it read the market that fails to follow as a warning that the move may not hold. On your ES chart it shows as the NQ band staying short of your candles’ new high, or above their new low.
By where the other market sits in its own range: 0 % at its low of the day, 100 % at its high. If NQ trades at 80 % of its range today, its band sits at 80 % of your market’s range today. That is why NQ at four times ES’s price lines up on an ES chart with no ratio to set, and why it never squashes your chart. The band lies inside your market’s range of the day, which can be wider than the candles on screen.
Bands take no part in your chart’s auto-scale, so they never squeeze your candles. A market that sits far from yours in its range can land above or below the prices on screen: its label then waits at the chart’s edge with an arrow, and the info box still shows it. Drag the price axis to see the band. Our pictures use a hand-set scale for that reason.
The distance, in your market’s points: how far your market would have to move to sit where the other market sits in its own range. Plus means the band sits above your price, so the other market is higher in its range than yours. A number shrinking toward zero means the two are coming back together; a growing one means they are pulling apart. The thin bracket beside the label draws the same distance as a line. The price in the label is the other market’s real last price, in its own format.
For day trading use Today, the default: it measures every market since your chart’s session start and starts fresh each session. Last trading day is not yesterday: it is a rolling window of one full session, so it never resets and the band runs through the session break. Use it to compare across the overnight. Either way, a 1-minute and a 5-minute chart of the same hours give the same picture.
Forty-seven settings in six groups, and what they add up to. The names in bold are the names in the indicator’s settings window.
Market 1, Market 2 and Market 3 each pick a market from a list of 24 futures, or Other to type any market NinjaTrader knows in the row below. Market 1 starts on Automatic, the usual partner of your chart’s market, the other two on Off; set them to Automatic too and each takes the next market, never one already shown: NQ, then YM, then RTY on an ES chart. Flip market 1, 2 or 3 flips that band for a market that moves the opposite way to yours.
Range sets the period every market is measured over: Today, the default, since your chart’s session start and fresh every session, or Last trading day, the last full session of trading, rolling and never resetting. Every market is measured over the same minutes, the ones your own market trades.
Show band 1, Band 1 color and Band 1 opacity %, the same for bands 2 and 3: dodger blue, deep orange and medium orchid at 12 % by default, colors that read on a dark and a light chart. Borders frame each band’s top and bottom at the border width and opacity you choose, each in its own border color.
Style draws each market as one joined band, the default, as one block per bar, or as a Line of its closes at the Line width and Line opacity % you set. Draw behind the candles, on by default, keeps every candle and wick on top of the bands and lines on candlestick, hollow and OHLC charts; Close line adds the closing prices inside a band, and Smoothing (bars) with Smoothing type calms the edges, off by default so the band always shows each bar’s exact high and low.
Beside the newest bar, each band carries a label: Show market name, Show price with the other market’s real last price, and Show distance in your market’s points, with a Distance bracket drawing it as a line. Price line adds dashed lines across the chart or right of the last bar, off by default; the offset from the bars, the text color, the band’s or your own, and the font set the look.
Show info box puts the numbers in a small table, on by default; switched off, the box shows only what needs your attention, like a market your feed does not carry. Columns picks the distance, the range positions, both, or everything; Corner, two offsets and a font place it, bottom right by default.
Up to three. Market 1, Market 2 and Market 3 each have a list of 24 common futures, from NQ, ES, YM and RTY to FDAX, gold, crude, bonds, currencies, VX, grains, BTC and ETH, plus Automatic, Off and Other. With Other you type any market NinjaTrader knows in the row below: its symbol for the current contract, like PL or 6A, or one contract month, like NQ 03-27.
The market traders usually hold beside yours, from the same exchange wherever one fits, so your data feed carries it too. ES and NQ pair with each other, as do FDAX and FESX, gold and silver, ZN and ZB, the euro and the pound, corn and soybeans, BTC and ETH; YM, RTY, NKD and crude get ES. A micro or mini chart gets its full-size market’s partner, and every other future gets one as well. A stock chart gets SPY. Market 2 and Market 3 on Automatic take the next markets, never one another row already shows: on ES that is NQ, then YM, then RTY; on gold, silver, then copper, then platinum.
Because on those days both markets do the same thing. When ES and NQ both make new highs bar after bar, both sit near the top of their own ranges and the band stays on your candles, even if one runs harder. The difference appears the moment one market stops making new highs or pulls back more than the other. That is the moment the band is built for.
Yes. Flip market 1, 2 or 3 flips that band, so the VIX on your ES chart or the dollar on your gold chart moves with your candles instead of against them; its label then says inv, short for inverted. Automatic already does this for the VX and the Dollar Index charts.
Yes. Style → Line draws only each market’s close, placed in its own range the same way, as one see-through line in its band color, behind your candles like the bands; Line width and Line opacity % set how strong it is. It is the cleanest look. The band, the default, also shows each bar’s high and low, which is what tells you whether the other market’s wick really reached a new high, so we recommend it for spotting a market that does not follow.
Yes. Each market has its own color, opacity and border color, 12 % by default so your candles stay clear; borders, their width and strength, the style, smoothing, every part of the label, its font and color, and the info box are yours to set as well. When a color sits too close to your chart’s background, the labels, lines and brackets are shaded just enough to stay readable, on a dark chart and a light one.
It’s built lean: each market is one extra data series, every finished bar’s band is worked out once and kept, and only the bars on screen are drawn. We measured 50,000 bars with three markets worked out in well under a second. If your chart ever lags with it on, email us: that’s a bug, not normal.
NinjaTrader’s own way is a second data series: add the instrument in the chart’s Data Series window and put it in your price panel. On your market’s price scale, NQ at four times ES’s price sits far above your candles and squeezes them flat; on the Left or Overlay scale it gets its own fit to the bars on screen, so where it sits changes as you scroll or zoom; in its own panel it is a second chart to watch. SMT Overlay Bands places each market by where it sits in its own range, for today or the last full trading day, instead, so its place never depends on what is on screen.
Data for each market you add, from the feed you already use. Most futures feeds carry CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX together; some sell CFE, ICE or Eurex data separately. If your feed does not carry a market, its row says so and the other bands are still drawn.
No. SMT Overlay Bands never touches your orders, positions or account. It draws on the chart — every order is yours to place, in your own order-entry window, exactly as before.
Download the zip after checkout, then in NinjaTrader 8 (NT8) go to Tools → Import → NinjaScript Add-On and pick the file. Add SMT Overlay Bands to a second or minute chart from the Indicators list and press OK: the partner market is picked for you and its band appears once NinjaTrader has loaded its data. If NinjaTrader was open when you installed it, restart it first. The step-by-step guide covers every message NinjaTrader can show and the update rule.
Email support, answered by the traders who built it. Bugs get fixed, and updates are free.
Every price of the other market is turned into a position in its own range: 0 % at its lowest price of the period so far, 100 % at its highest. Both markets of a band use the same period, today or the last trading day, measured over your chart’s trading hours: session breaks, weekends and holidays do not count.
Low and high are each market’s own, over the same period; your range is your high minus your low. That position is drawn at the same spot in your market’s range. The band’s top is the other market’s bar high, its bottom the bar low. Because the other bar always lies inside its own range, the band (with Smoothing off) always lies inside your range over the same period. It needs no price scale of its own and takes no part in the chart’s auto-scale, so it never squashes your candles.
How far your market would have to move to sit where the other market sits in its own range, in your market’s points, rounded to its tick: the same number in the label and the info box. Plus: the band sits above your price, so the other market is higher in its range than yours (lower, when the band is flipped).
| Point | NQ price | Position | On the ES chart | Drawn as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NQ’s high today | 29,300.00 | 100 % | 7,760.00 | ES’s high today |
| Last bar’s high | 29,240.00 | 80.00 % | 7,748.00 | the band’s top |
| Last bar’s close | 29,230.00 | 76.67 % | 7,746.00 | the band’s close, the label’s level |
| Last bar’s low | 29,220.00 | 73.33 % | 7,744.00 | the band’s bottom |
| NQ’s low today | 29,000.00 | 0 % | 7,700.00 | ES’s low today |
| ES’s own price | — | 65.83 % | 7,739.50 | distance 7,746.00 − 7,739.50 = +6.50 |
ES’s range today is 7,700.00 to 7,760.00, 60 points: 7,700.00 + 80 % × 60 = 7,748.00. NQ trades near four times ES’s price, and it does not matter: only the positions are carried across, so the same band appears whatever the two markets’ price levels and tick sizes.
Today measures every market since your chart’s session start (on ES: 18:00 New York on a full-session chart, 9:30 on a day-session chart) and starts fresh each session. A market that opens half an hour or more after your session starts, the Dollar Index beside gold or the grains beside ES, is measured from its first trade, and so is your market for that band. Last trading day measures the last full session of trading, 23 hours on a full-session ES chart, rolling, and over a weekend reaches back over the closed days.
Every market is loaded on your chart’s trading hours, and its bars count only inside your market’s sessions. A bar in which the other market did not trade draws its band as a flat line at its last price: it did not move. Beside a market that closes before yours, the grains or Eurex, the band runs flat until it trades again. With no counted bar in the period at all, there is no band for that bar.
When either market’s range in the period is smaller than 4 of its own ticks, a position would mean dividing by almost nothing, so that bar gets no band. In the first minutes of a quiet session the band can start a few bars after the open for that reason.
Flip market 1, 2 or 3 uses 100 % minus the position and swaps the band’s top and bottom, so a market that moves the opposite way, the VIX against ES, moves with your candles. The label says inv; the distance follows the flipped band, while the info box’s range column still shows where the market really sits. Automatic already flips the partner of a market that moves the opposite way (ES on a VX chart, the euro on a Dollar Index chart); Flip turns it back.
This is the actual settings panel in NinjaTrader — six numbered groups, plain-English names. Every row in the table below is one of these.
| Setting | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Markets | ||
| Market 1 | Automatic | Off · Automatic · NQ · ES · YM · RTY · FDAX · FESX · NKD · GC · SI · HG · CL · NG · ZN · ZB · ZF · 6E · 6J · 6B · DX · VX · ZC · ZS · BTC · ETH · Other |
| Market 1 - other | empty | Any market NinjaTrader knows: a symbol like PL or one contract like NQ 03-27 |
| Flip market 1 | Off | On · Off |
| Market 2 | Off | Off · Automatic · NQ · ES · YM · RTY · FDAX · FESX · NKD · GC · SI · HG · CL · NG · ZN · ZB · ZF · 6E · 6J · 6B · DX · VX · ZC · ZS · BTC · ETH · Other |
| Market 2 - other | empty | Any market NinjaTrader knows: a symbol like PL or one contract like NQ 03-27 |
| Flip market 2 | Off | On · Off |
| Market 3 | Off | Off · Automatic · NQ · ES · YM · RTY · FDAX · FESX · NKD · GC · SI · HG · CL · NG · ZN · ZB · ZF · 6E · 6J · 6B · DX · VX · ZC · ZS · BTC · ETH · Other |
| Market 3 - other | empty | Any market NinjaTrader knows: a symbol like PL or one contract like NQ 03-27 |
| Flip market 3 | Off | On · Off |
| Range | Today | Today · Last trading day |
| Band Fills | ||
| Show band 1 | On | On · Off |
| Band 1 color | Dodger Blue | Any color |
| Band 1 opacity % | 12 | 1 – 90 |
| Show band 2 | On | On · Off |
| Band 2 color | Orange, #EF6C00 | Any color |
| Band 2 opacity % | 12 | 1 – 90 |
| Show band 3 | On | On · Off |
| Band 3 color | Medium orchid | Any color |
| Band 3 opacity % | 12 | 1 – 90 |
| Band Borders | ||
| Borders | On | On · Off |
| Border width | 1 | 1 – 5 |
| Border opacity % | 35 | 5 – 100 |
| Band 1 border color | Dodger Blue | Any color |
| Band 2 border color | Orange, #EF6C00 | Any color |
| Band 3 border color | Medium orchid | Any color |
| Band Style | ||
| Style | Band | Band · Blocks · Line |
| Line width | 2 | 1 – 5 |
| Line opacity % | 60 | 5 – 100 |
| Draw behind the candles | On | On · Off |
| Close line | Off | On · Off |
| Smoothing (bars) | 1, no smoothing | 1 – 20 |
| Smoothing type | Exponential | Simple · Weighted · Exponential |
| Label Information + Visuals | ||
| Show market name | On | On · Off |
| Show price | On | On · Off |
| Show distance | On | On · Off |
| Distance bracket | On | On · Off |
| Price line | Off | Off · Across the whole chart · Right of the last bar |
| Offset from bars (px) | 6 | 0 – 300 |
| Text in band color | On | On · Off |
| Text color | White | Any color |
| Font | Arial 11 | Any font, size 6 – 48 |
| Info Box | ||
| Show info box | On | On · Off |
| Columns | Distance + range positions | Distance · Range positions · Distance + range positions · Everything |
| Corner | Bottom right | Top left · Top right · Bottom left · Bottom right |
| Offset X | 5 | 0 – 500 |
| Offset Y | 5 | 0 – 500 |
| Font | Arial 12 | Any font, size 6 – 36 |
Ranges are printed only where the indicator enforces one. In the settings window the two Range choices read “Today (resets at the session start)” and “Last trading day (one full session, rolling)”. A border color set to Transparent always takes its band’s color. Colors accept any color.
Each market you add is one extra data series of your chart’s bar size (a Heikin-Ashi chart adds one more, for your market’s real bars), loaded over the same days as your chart where your feed has them. A bar’s band is worked out once, when that bar has finished in your market and in every market you added, and it never changes after that: the bands do not repaint. Only the newest bar or two are worked out again as price moves, and only the bars on screen are drawn. Reloading the chart draws the same picture, except where NinjaTrader’s reloaded bars differ from the ones it built live.
Measured offline on the indicator’s own code: 50,000 bars with three markets in 0.04 to 0.15 seconds, before NinjaTrader’s own loading and drawing. Each bar kept costs a few hundred bytes, so a minute chart uses little memory; a 1-second chart with ten days loaded can hold around 200 MB. It runs on every price change, also when the chart is set to On bar close (the Output window says so once), because a thin market’s bar would otherwise be frozen flat; and it keeps up in a hidden chart tab, so the bands are current when you come back. If your chart ever lags with SMT Overlay Bands on, that is a bug and we want to hear about it.
Every market is loaded on your chart’s trading hours and with your chart’s price type (last, bid or ask), so all of them are measured over the same minutes, and the bands read the same in any display time zone. One known exception: in the hour the clocks go back, BTC and ETH futures, which trade right through it, can show a wrong or missing band for that hour.
A market picked by its symbol loads its current contract by NinjaTrader’s own roll dates; a market that rolls on the same day as yours takes your chart’s contract month. A contract typed with its month (NQ 03-27) is used as typed, with a note when that month is past its roll. A chart left open across another market’s roll keeps the contract it loaded with; reload the chart (F5) after the roll to move to the new one. CL, NG, VX and the crypto futures roll every month, so that reload is a monthly habit beside them.
On a continuous-contract chart (##-##) or a chart of a past date range, a market picked by its symbol still loads today’s contract: type the contract you want in its “other” row. With Last trading day and NinjaTrader’s “Merge non back adjusted” on, the roll-day price step sits inside the range for one session, as it does on your own chart.
Market 1 starts on Automatic: the market traders usually hold beside yours, from the same exchange wherever one fits, so your data feed carries it too. A micro or mini chart gets its full-size market’s partner. Market 2 and Market 3 on Automatic take the next markets, never one another row already shows: on ES that is NQ, then YM, then RTY; on gold, silver, then copper, then platinum.
SMT Overlay Bands itself makes no network connection. The markets it adds come from your own data feed through NinjaTrader, the same way every chart does. The only license check is NinjaTrader’s own vendor licensing, run by NinjaTrader inside the platform: no license server of ours. Nothing about you, your account, your charts or your trades is sent anywhere, and there is no telemetry.
Fourteen days, every setting, no card. It ends by itself. Keep it for $79 once, yours for good.
Not for you if you want a system that tells you when to enter. SMT Overlay Bands shows where your markets sit against each other right now, in your colors; the trade is yours.
Pairs well with Multi-timeframe trend indicator (MultiTrend) · Free Session Colors indicator · Free Daily High Low Lines
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