Free NinjaTrader 8 indicator
Everything Your Chart Needs.
Nothing It Doesn’t.
StratGeeks Chart Essentials combines opening-range tools, daily and session levels, range measurements, Economic News, a customizable moving average and a current-bar timer in one clean NinjaTrader 8 indicator.
Free download · NinjaTrader 8 · Fully customizable · No automated trading
What it does
The tools you reach for every session, in one indicator.
Show only the components you use. Every group below turns on and off independently, keeps its own colours, styles and times, and draws straight onto your NinjaTrader chart.
Set the window, and the range draws itself — developing while it forms, frozen once it closes, clean again the next day.
- Adjustable opening-range start and end times, defaulting to 9:30–9:45 AM US Eastern
- Opening-range high and low, with an optional midpoint
- Independent on/off control for the high, the low and the midpoint
- Opening-range size measured in ticks
- Optional range divider — equal increments calculated from the range, off by default
- The divider interval reported in ticks, so you are not counting them by hand
The session levels traders mark by hand every morning, drawn as soon as they exist.
- Current day high and low
- Previous day high and low, drawn once a valid prior session has been observed
- Premarket / Globex high and low, off by default
- London high and low, defaulting to 3:00–6:00 AM US Eastern, off by default
- Asia high and low, off by default
- Separate high and low colours on every pair
- Its own master toggle on every group
Monitor important economic events directly inside Chart Essentials with an optional news panel, exact-time event lines, impact and currency filters, and independent controls for past and upcoming events.
- An integrated economic calendar, read on the chart rather than in another window
- An optional on-chart News panel
- Exact-time vertical event lines, with optional event labels
- High, Medium and Low impact filters, each with its own colour
- Currency filters, so you only see the events you trade around
- Independent control over past events and upcoming events
- Previous, forecast and actual values shown where the calendar supplies them
- Optional notifications, and a clear data-status readout
- Its own master toggle, like every other component
Show only what you use. Everything else stays off the chart without losing your settings.
- Every major component enables and disables independently
- Turning a component off clears its drawings immediately and keeps your saved configuration
- Adjustable colours, line widths and line styles throughout
- Adjustable session and range times on every time-based component
- The statistics panel has its own text, font, background, opacity and offset controls
The two things traders end up adding a second indicator for.
- One optional moving average — EMA, HMA, SMA, VWMA, TMA, TEMA, WMA or T3
- Adjustable period, colour, width and appearance; off by default
- A current-candle countdown that sits beside the forming bar and moves with it
- Adjustable timer appearance and offsets, with stale and duplicate timer text cleared
One time model for the whole indicator, and it understands daylight saving.
- US Eastern by default, with proper Eastern Standard / Daylight conversion rather than a fixed UTC offset
- Chart Time available where the platform supports it
- Every meaningful session and range time is yours to adjust
Economic News operates independently, so the core Chart Essentials tools continue working if the calendar feed is temporarily unavailable.
What it is not. Chart Essentials is a chart-analysis and information tool. It does not generate trading signals, entries, exits or alerts, it does not place or manage orders, it does not size positions or set stops and targets, and it does not tell you what to trade. It plots levels and measurements; the decisions stay yours.
The statistics panel
Stop measuring the range by hand.
A compact panel in the lower-left corner of the chart reports what you would otherwise be working out yourself — the day’s opening-range size in ticks, and the size of each range-divider interval.
- The opening-range size, in ticks
- The size of one range-divider interval, in ticks
- The divider value shown alongside the measurement
- Developing values while the range is still forming, final values once it closes
- Its own visibility control, and adjustable text, font, background, opacity and position
On the chart
What it looks like.
Real NinjaTrader 8 captures of the released build — the chart with Economic News running on it, and the one settings window that configures all of it. Nothing on this page is a mock-up, a drawing or a generated image.
One indicator doing all of it at once: the opening range drawn in magenta with its lower-left statistics panel reporting a 201-tick range and a 50.25-tick divider, the moving average, the current-bar timer beside the forming candle, and Economic News running as exact-time event lines with their labels stacked so none of them overlap.
The levels most traders redraw every morning, each labelled with its price at the right edge and each with its own colour: Premarket / Globex high, previous day high, opening-range high and low, and London high and low. Asia High/Low is off in this capture, which is its default.
The first four groups of the single settings window — labels and projection, the time zone the whole indicator works in, the opening-range window with its high, low and optional midpoint, and the statistics panel with its own text, font, background and offset controls.
The range divider and then every session level as its own group, each with a master toggle, its own times where it has them, and separate high and low colours: current day, previous day, Premarket / Globex, and Asia High/Low.
Economic News configured inside the same settings window as everything else — a refresh interval, the on-chart panel with its position and the fields it shows, and the event lines with their past and future controls and label placement. There is nothing separate to install or configure.
Who it is for
Built for people already marking these levels.
- NinjaTrader 8 futures traders.
- Traders who mark session levels by hand every morning.
- Opening-range traders.
- Anyone trying to run fewer separate indicators on one chart.
- Traders who want chart context without automated trade signals.
Installing it
Import it yourself, in nine steps.
The website installs nothing on your machine. You download the file and import it yourself, the same way you would any other NinjaScript add-on. These are the same steps your Chart Essentials Quick Start email carries.
- Download the Chart Essentials ZIP using the link we send you.
- Keep the downloaded ZIP intact—do not extract it.
- Open NinjaTrader 8.
- Go to Tools → Import → NinjaScript Add-On.
- Select the downloaded Chart Essentials ZIP.
- Complete the NinjaTrader import prompts.
- Open or refresh a chart.
- Open the Indicators window and add StratGeeks Chart Essentials.
- Review the settings and enable or adjust the components you want to display.
If the indicator does not appear straight away, restart NinjaTrader and check Tools → Options → General to confirm the import completed. Windows sometimes marks downloaded files as blocked: right-click the ZIP, choose Properties, and tick Unblock before importing.
Get it
Where should we send it?
One indicator, free: the opening-range tools, the session levels, Economic News, the moving average and the bar timer.
Enter your email to unlock the immediate download. We’ll also send your Chart Essentials Quick Start email with your reusable download link, installation steps and support information.
- NinjaTrader 8 is required. The file imports through Tools → Import → NinjaScript Add-On.
- One indicator, one settings window. Economic News is part of Chart Essentials — there is no second thing to install.
- The download is immediate. The next page has the file. Email is not the only way to get it — your Chart Essentials Quick Start email carries a reusable private download link so you can come back to the current available release later.
- Your email is used to send you that Quick Start email and, only if you tick the box, occasional StratGeeks updates. Joining Discord is never required to download or use the indicator.
Community
Stay in the loop.
The StratGeeks Discord is where indicator updates, new releases, product announcements and what we are building get posted. Free and optional — the indicator is yours either way.
Get started
Put the Essential Levels on Your Chart.
One free indicator, NinjaTrader 8 required.
Risk disclosure
Futures trading involves substantial risk and is not suitable for all investors. Only risk capital should be used. This indicator is a charting tool and does not provide trading advice or recommendations.
Full Risk Disclosure →