Phoenix Only — Sunsetting Legacy Strategies & What's Next
Hey everyone,
I want to give you a heads up on some changes to our strategy lineup and the direction we're headed.
The Short Version
I'm retiring Goldilocks, Breakout Guardian, Direction Momentum, and Low Volume Hunter. Going forward, Phoenix is our only active trading strategy. If you're currently running any of the retired strategies, they'll continue to work — I'm not disabling anything — but they won't receive further updates or support.
Why
Over the past several months I've gotten serious about robustness testing. Not just backtesting, not just "does it look good on a chart," but real statistical validation: walk-forward optimization, Monte Carlo simulation, and out-of-sample testing. I score every strategy on a 0-100 scale based on whether it demonstrates a genuine statistical edge versus being curve-fit to historical data.
When I put our entire lineup through that process, Phoenix was the only strategy that passed. 100/100 with a 67.6% win rate across 3,054 trades over 6 years. It was the strategy that refused to die no matter how hard I stress-tested it. The others didn't survive the validation process. Strategies have to prove they are tradeable and have a real edge.
This doesn't mean the Aeromir Autotraders concept is dead. I'm actively researching new strategies, but the bar is a lot higher now. If a strategy can't pass robustness testing, it doesn't ship. That's a hard filter and it's not easy to get through — which is exactly the point.
SMA Equity Filter Removal
Some of you have been using the SMA equity curve filter with the older strategies. I want to explain why Phoenix doesn't use one and why I'm not adding it.
SMA equity filtering makes sense for strategies with lower win rates — say 55% or lower — where you can hit long stretches of consecutive losses and deep drawdowns. The filter helps you sit out during those rough patches.
Phoenix runs at 67.6% win rate for the past 6 years. The consecutive loss streaks are shorter and the drawdowns are shallower. When I tested SMA equity filtering on Phoenix, it actually hurt performance — you'd sit out during brief dips that recovered quickly, missing profitable trades in the process. The math just doesn't support it at this win rate, so I'm leaving it out rather than including a feature that makes the strategy worse.
New in Phoenix v2.0.2: Hedge Protection
Along with the strategy cleanup, I've bundled the new Aeromir Competition Coordinator directly into the Phoenix DLL. No separate install needed — you get it automatically when you import Phoenix.
Exchange Hedge Protection (always active) — Before every entry, Phoenix now scans all your connected accounts for existing positions in the same symbol family. If you're long MNQ on one account, it blocks a short NQ entry on another account. This covers ES/MES, NQ/MNQ, YM/MYM, RTY/M2K, plus metals, energy, bonds, currencies, and grains. You don't have to configure anything — it just works.
APEX Correlation Protection (opt-in) — APEX has stricter rules than most prop firms. They consider all equity indices as correlated, meaning long ES on one account and short NQ on another is a violation — even though those are different products. Most people find this out the hard way when they get an account closure notice. If you're running APEX accounts, enable the "APEX Correlation Protection" checkbox under Daily Limits and Phoenix handles compliance automatically.
Competition Locks — If you're running Phoenix on the same instrument across multiple accounts (like NQ on three funded accounts), the coordinator makes sure only one instance enters at a time so you don't get duplicate signals racing each other.
This is real protection for real problems that prop firm traders deal with. I trade my own funded accounts with Phoenix every day and these checks run on every single entry.
What You Need to Do
If you're running Phoenix: Update to v2.0.2. Delete your Phoenix files from Documents\NinjaTrader 8\templates\Strategy\ and restart NinjaTrader after importing. APEX users — turn on the correlation protection checkbox.
If you're running the retired strategies: They still work, but I'd encourage you to transition to Phoenix. The robustness numbers speak for themselves.
Downloads: Download Page
Changelog: Phoenix v2.0.2 Changelog
Questions? Drop them in this thread or open a support ticket.
Tom