Getting Started with NightShift Trader: From Idea to 24/7 Agent

NightShift Trader is built around one workflow: turn a trading idea into exact rules, prove it on historical data, then watch it trade on paper in real time before you ever risk money. This guide walks through every part of the app in the order most people use it.

1. Create your free account

Sign up with an email and password. Every account starts on the Free plan with a $100,000 paper trading account, the Strategy Builder (2 saved strategies), backtests on 1 year of data, 10 AI chart analyses a month, a 10-symbol watchlist and 3 price alerts. No card is needed.

2. Find something worth trading

• Dashboard: an overview of your watchlist, market movers and recent notifications.
• Market Hub: a stock heatmap, market quotes, top stories and performance snapshots. Pro adds a full screener, Stocks Today hotlists, the economic calendar and an advanced chart.
• Sentiment: news headlines scored as bullish or bearish so you can see the mood around a ticker.
• Watchlist: save the symbols you follow and open any of them on a chart in one click.

3. Read the chart and ask the AI

Open any stock, ETF or crypto on the chart page. Add moving averages (Free) or RSI, MACD and Bollinger Bands (Pro). Click Analyze chart to get an AI read of the trend, key support and resistance, signals, and a trade idea with an entry, stop and target.

Every trade idea the AI gives you is locked into your Track Record with a timestamp and scored automatically against what the market actually did afterwards. That keeps the AI honest, and it keeps you honest too.

4. Build a strategy in plain English

Go to Strategy Builder and describe your idea the way you would explain it to a friend, for example: "Buy when the 50-day SMA crosses above the 200-day SMA and RSI(14) is below 70. Sell when price closes below the 50-day SMA. Stop at 2× ATR, target 3R." NightShift compiles it into exact rules you can read and check before testing.

Entry conditions must all be true at the same time. Exit conditions trigger on any one of them. Stops can be a percentage or a multiple of ATR(14), and targets can be a percentage, an ATR multiple or a risk multiple (R).

5. Backtest it

Pick a symbol and a range and run the backtest. Free accounts test on 1 year of data; Pro unlocks 3 months, 6 months, 3 years and 5 years. You get the equity curve against buy-and-hold, total return, max drawdown, win rate, number of trades and the full trade list.

Backtests fill at the signal bar's close, gap through stops at the open, and assume the stop hit first when a stop and a target are touched on the same bar. These are deliberately conservative rules, so results are less flattering but more realistic.

6. Paper trade, by hand or with an agent

Use the Paper Trading page to place market, limit and stop orders against live prices with your virtual $100,000. On Pro you can deploy any saved strategy as an agent: it checks the market around the clock, places paper trades when your rules fire and manages the stop and target for you.

7. Get alerted

Set price alerts on any symbol from the Alerts page. Pro members get emails for triggered alerts and agent trades, and can connect Telegram or a Discord channel under Settings → Alert channels, with one-tap buttons to open the chart or place a paper trade.

8. Check your Track Record

The Track Record page shows how your AI trade ideas and agents have performed in real time, and compares each agent's live results with its original backtest. Entries are hash-chained, so they cannot be quietly edited after the fact. A big gap between backtest and live is your cue to rethink a strategy before trading it with real money.