Signal Analyzer Guide

"Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed." — Proverbs 15:22

The PBF Signal Analyzer (V5 Beta) is a real-time NQ futures structure and context companion running inside NinjaTrader 8. It builds the session's key levels, measures how much independent structure agrees at each one, flags what is arguing against it, and reports all of that as price meets those levels — with most of the attention on the 9:45–11:00 ET window.

What It Does

• Confluence bands — every level encounter is banded A (most structure agreeing), B, or C, from the factor count and the conflicts present
• RTH + Rolling Delta — both delta timeframes must align for full credit; strong opposition suppresses the encounter
• ATR-adaptive measurement — the approach band and internal level-resolution distances scale with volatility, so "close to a level" means the same thing on quiet and violent days
• ORB + Cornerstone confluence — overlays the opening range with prior-day levels, IB, VWAP and volume-profile nodes
• Counter-Delta hard block — suppresses an encounter when both delta readings strongly oppose the structural read (≥300 contracts NQ default)
• Live web app — read the same structure from any browser, tied to your Supabase account, 7-day session
• Google Sheets logging — every reported encounter auto-logs with how it resolved, for your own review

Installation & Activation

Full walkthrough in Getting Started. Quick path:

1. Download PBFIndicators.zip from your account
2. NT8 → Tools → Import → NinjaScript Add-On → select the ZIP
3. Add PBFSignalAnalyzerV5Beta to your NQ 5-minute chart
4. First load opens browser to profitbyfaith.com/activate → click Approve → indicator unlocks within 15 seconds

Encounter State Progression

Every level encounter moves through a defined state machine. The app cannot be in two states at once.

Confluence Bands

A band is a measure of how much structure agrees at a level. It is not a forecast, not a probability, and not a rating of any trade. Higher bands mean a cleaner structural read — nothing about what price does next, and nothing about what you should do about it. Two encounters in the same band can behave completely differently, and the app makes no claim otherwise. Our historical measurement work on how levels behave is published separately, with its full method and its unresolved questions stated openly: measurement methodology →.

Confluence Weight Table

Every level encounter is scored 0–100+ on how much independent structure agrees there. The total is capped and mapped to a band. Hard blocks override any total.

Setup IDs

Each signal carries a setup ID that tells you exactly what the indicator detected:

Time Filters

Conflict Flags & Hard Blocks

Conflict chips appear in the web app's conflict banner. They are the app telling you what is arguing against the level — it reports them, it does not resolve them.

Order Management (ATM Templates)

The package ships a set of NinjaTrader ATM templates. They are ordinary NinjaTrader order-management templates — they belong to your order entry, not to the analyzer. The Signal Analyzer does not select one for you, does not place an order, and has no knowledge of your position.

What ships

Eleven templates covering funded and evaluation account sizes across calm, normal, high-volatility and ranging conditions. Every one of them is built around the same hard risk cap: $200 maximum per contract. That cap is a fixed guardrail on the templates themselves — it is not a stop the app recommends, and the app never tells you which template to load or when.

Why a fixed risk cap

Prop evaluations are lost by outsized single-trade damage far more often than by a poor read. Capping per-contract risk at the template level means the cap holds even on a day when discipline is thin. Whether you use the templates at all, and which one, is entirely your decision.

The Kill Zone Window (9:45–11:00)

The indicator is tuned for this window. Outside it the structural picture is thinner, participation is lower, and the levels the app reports carry less agreement behind them — the app says so, via the time-filter penalties below. When and whether you engage with any of it remains your decision.

Typical Session Rhythm

A typical session produces four or five encounters that clear the reporting floor — the market decides how many, not the indicator. Daily limits, if you use them, are yours to set per account.

Structure Rows

During an encounter the app shows three price rows. They are the structure around price — not order levels, and not a plan.

V5 Quality Strip

The strip shows 6 cells above the structure rows. Each cell is one independent factor, green when it agrees with the structural read at the level. More green means more of the market's moving parts are pointing the same way — it is a count of agreement, not a score for a trade.

1M Confirmation Note

Every AT LEVEL encounter includes a trigger_note field. It describes, on the 1-minute chart, what would count as the level being genuinely accepted or rejected rather than merely touched.

Key Settings Reference

Session-Adaptive Scoring (NEW · 2026-05-13)

The indicator flexes its reporting floor and approach distance by session phase. KILLZONE (9:30–11:00 ET) and POWER_HOUR (15:00–16:00 ET) loosen; LUNCH (12:00–14:00 ET) tightens. Shadow variables reset to your user-set baseline every bar — no ratcheting across phases.

JSON snapshot now includes eff_min_fire_score, eff_approach_ticks, and session_adaptive.

Daily Discipline Caps (NEW · 2026-05-13)

Three optional rails that stop the indicator surfacing new encounters for the rest of the day once a limit you set is reached. OFF by default. Built for prop accounts (Apex, TPT, MFFU, Tradeify) where one bad day busts the eval. State transitions on an encounter already in progress are unaffected. These are limits you configure on what the app shows you — they are not the app managing your trading.

NT8 Output window prints which cap fired and why. JSON exposes daily_r, daily_caps_tripped, daily_cap_reason ("MAX_FIRES" / "TARGET_R" / "MAX_LOSS_R").

Resolution Summary Card (NEW · 2026-05-14)

When an encounter resolves — in the level's favour or against it — the structure rows are replaced by a compact summary of the move. This prevents confusion: those prices describe something that already happened, not structure currently in play.

EMA200-BOUNCE + FAILED-ENGULF Setups (NEW · 2026-05-14)

Two pattern types in the detection engine. Both can reach band A when confluence at the level is high.

EMA200-BOUNCE

Detects when price is in a trend, pulls back to touch the EMA 200 zone (±2 pts), and the bar closes holding above/below it. Structurally this is one of the cleanest continuation reads available — price came to the macro level, tested it, and it held.

• Long bias: Price above EMA 200 → bar wicks down into ±2pt zone → close holds above EMA. Not a break — a test and hold.
• Short bias: Inverse — price below EMA 200 → wick up into zone → close holds below.
• Auto-bonus: any pattern (not just EMA200-BOUNCE) where the bar wick touches the EMA 200 zone also earns the EMA Touch +12 bonus. A PDH-RETEST at EMA 200 scores both simultaneously.

FAILED-ENGULF (Outside Bar Trap)

Detects Al Brooks' "Outside Bar Trap" — where a strong directional bar is immediately followed by a larger bar that fully body-engulfs it in the opposite direction. The first bar's traders are trapped.

• Requires minimum 2pt bodies (filters out doji noise).
• Bullish structure: bar[2] bearish → bar[1] bull body fully engulfs it (opens at or below bar[2] close, closes at or above bar[2] open). Bears trapped, bulls take over.
• Bearish structure: inverse.
• Invalidation is measured from bar[2] high/low — the level where the original move started. That is where the pattern would be proven wrong, not an order price.

ES Correlation Scoring (NEW · 2026-05-14)

The indicator loads a secondary ES (S&P 500 futures) 5-minute data series and uses the relationship between ES EMA 20 and EMA 200 as a macro bias filter on every NQ level encounter.

Live VIX in the Quality Strip (NEW · 2026-05-14)

The VIX tile polls profitbyfaith.com/api/vix every 5 minutes in the background and displays live volatility in the quality strip. No manual paste needed in live trading.

• Green (VIX 12–18): calm regime — ranges behave, levels tend to hold or break cleanly.
• Orange (VIX 18–25): elevated regime — wider swings around every level. Conflict chips appear when VIX ≥ 25.
• Red (VIX ≥ 25): high-volatility regime — levels are frequently overshot before they matter. VIX ≥ 30 triggers a hard "VIX high risk" conflict chip.
• MAN badge: Shows when ManualVIX is set to a non-zero value — auto-poll is overridden. Useful in backtest to simulate specific volatility environments.
• Backtest: Auto-poll is disabled (live URL data has no meaning for historical replay). Set ManualVIX to whatever VIX was on the day you're backtesting — this also feeds the VIX conflict scoring in the engine.

How to Read It Well