TradingView is one of the biggest trading charting platforms in the world. With over 3 million active users each month, this online platform has ingrained itself on Youtube, Twitter, and trading desks around the world. This is the first place any new trader should go if they want a clean and easy-to-use charting platform.
In this article like TradingView Tutorial and we are going to cover all aspects of TradingView, making sure that you have an extremely good understanding of the platform. The goal is to get you from “beginner” status to “expert” status with the platform.
Throughout this article we are going to go through:
- TradingView Layout
- TradingView indicators
- How to use TradingView
- TradingView Pine Script
- TradingView Strategy Tester
- TradingView Screener & Use
- Trading on TradingView
TradingView Layout
First of all, TradingView is accessible through a browser, on the internet. You do not have to download anything to use the platform. Just go to: https://www.tradingview.com/
This is what the first page looks like:
There are 4 quadrants that are broken down here.
- Yellow: The top menu bar where you will find; Charts, Trade, Markets, Screeners, Ideas, Streams, Scripts, and More.
- Blue: Editors picks are posts that TradingView editors select to showcase on the front page. These are written by TradingView members. Sort of like a social media channel where members would share trade ideas, educational tips and more.
- Green: Market Summary of the major indices in the US market and how they performed on the day.
- Purple: Slightly cut off but the brokers that are available on TradingView. Yes, you can trade on this platform as well.
Before we dive into the “Yellow” bar menu above you can also download the TradingView platform for desktop. It’s relatively new but is an amazing tool. You can open multiple windows tabs at the same time. Instead of going into a browser and taking up precious screen space, the desktop app is an easy fix!
Out of the top quadrants, the majority of the action happens in the yellow box. Where you have:
- Chart
- Trade
- Markets
- Screeners
- Ideas
- Streams
- Scripts
- More.
When you select “Chart” It’s going to take you to an in-depth technical analysis chart. In our case, we have a chart of the S&P 500 futures (ES1!) on a 5-min chart. You can see a lot of things on this screenshot. This is a “dark” layout, you can also change your layout colors and your layout to “white”. Right-click the chart> color theme>Light or Dark.
On the top toolbar of the image you can change the following:
- Change the symbol
- The charts timeframe
- The chart type (candlestick, line, etc)
- Add indicators
- Compare with other assets
- Alerts
- The layout of the chart (change to multiple different quadrants)
- Save the chart
- Replay tool
On the left-hand side, there is a vertical toolbar, this is where you can add drawing, lines, Fibonacci, and more on your chart.
At the bottom of the chart, you can see different time frames, 1D, 5D, 1M, 6M, and so on. This will present the period of time that you will look at on the chart. 1D will show you the current day’s movement (intraday). 6M will show you the last 6 months of the asset in question.
You can also change the timezone to match your timezone.
Under the “TRADE” tab on the platform, you will see which brokers are available for use on TradingView. You can place trades directly on the platform. A lot of the brokers are Forex or CFD-based so keep that in mind. There is a crypto broker as well.
If you were to select “Markets” you will be presented with a drop-down menu that allows you to look at all the different asset classes.
For Example:
- Indices
- Futures
- Currencies
- Crypto
- Bonds
There are a lot of different choices when you enter the market of your choice. Hover over and you can see top gainers/losers etc when it comes to stocks. There’s a lot more!
We’ll talk about the “Screeners” and “Scripts” in a later section in this article, for more information on these please go to that section of the article.
Under “Ideas” you will find ideas posted by millions of TradingView users. You will find IDEAS, rather than confirmed 100% trades. These are to be taken with a grain of salt, anyone can post in the “Ideas” section. There is a voting system where authors with a lot of likes and comments (engagement) will see their articles posted at the top. Authors will be rewarded reputation points as well so they become more reputable. Those with large reputations often will have solid trade ideas.
There is a portion where you can find either trading ideas or educational ideas to learn from. Along with the Editor’s picks where TradingView staff will select posts and promote them on the front page.
The layout is yours to explore! Go ahead and play with it, see what you find!
TradingView indicators
TradingView is an amazing platform for indicator use and overall technical analysis. If you are looking for a specific indicator, TradingView probably has it.
The indicator button can be found at the top of the toolbar. Under the “Indicators” tab where you have the Function key. It is found in the pink box below.
TradingView has a great indicator system because they have the ability to choose from a general TradingView library and create indicators by authors/traders that use the platform.
When you open the “Indicators” tab you will see the image below. You have a plethora of different options. You can:
- Search for a specific indicator
- Create one
- Look at what is built into the platform
- Browse candlestick pattern indicators
- View the public library (where authors band together)
- Add volume profile studies.
You’ll also notice that you can “favorite” some indicators, which will result in a golden star added to the indicator.
 Depending on the version that you have you will be able to add a certain amount of indicators. You can also manage the settings of the indicators at your will. In the top left corner of your chart, you will find a drop-down with a number that will lay out all of the indicators that you are looking at. (Green box below)
You can hide the indicator and unhide it (the “eye” icon). You can also manage the settings of your indicators and customize them how you like.
The top indicators that I use on TradingView are the following:
- Volume
- Exponential Moving Average (20)
- Session volume profile
- EMA cloud, by Zamboniman (5/12)
- EMA cloud, by Zamboniman (34/50)
- Pivot Point Standard
They are all visible in the following image. For more info on them, check out our free community. Tradeproacademy Community
How to use TradingView
There are many ways to use TradingView to your advantage! There are traders that use the platform to the ONLY chart, there are traders that use the platform to chat and trade. There is a mix, the platform is also usually white-labeled on your favorite trading sites, like FlowAlgo. The majority of traders use the platform strictly for charting and opt to trade on another platform or broker platform.
If you want to use it as a brokerage, there are Forex options, CFD options, and crypto options. Stock trading, options trading, and futures trading are either non-existent or weak on TradingView.
With a Premium subscription, you can get access to free data which comes from the BZX exchange. This is not necessarily reliable. Instead, you can get the data from a real exchange for a small fee for futures and stocks.
The most effective way to use TradingView is charting and technical analysis. A trader can set up their charts as they would like with the multiple layout options. You can create a screen split into various sections. Just like the one below, split into three, the SPY 5-min chart on the left. The SPY 15-min chart on the top right and the QQQ 5-min chart on the bottom right.
Traders typically use TradingView for their market structure, price action, drawing support, and resistance levels, along with the indicators available on the platform.
The indicator library and accessibility is probably the most sought-after feature which makes this platform one of the most widely used in the world. You can access pretty much any indicator you can think of and access other trader’s indicators through the platform.
Another really good use of TradingView is the community where other traders post their ideas and trades. A lot of technical analysis-based charts along with the educational factor. This gives members an insight on what they’re looking for in stocks and other assets. A lot of the assets out there on display are Forex-based. So it’s a great community for FX traders. You should take the info here with a grain of salt though, it is a random person on the internet after all. Overall the platform allows people to “like” other people’s posts and follow them which gives them a reputation score to see which traders are more reputable and which you would like to follow. Overall there are a lot of ways to use this platform.
TradingView Pine Script
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TradingView has a lot of capabilities as mentioned and one of the most popular ones is the strategy script. Called Pine Script where traders can create their own strategies based on indicators and what we have present in the libraries of the platform.
At the bottom of the platform, you will see a toolbar with a few different options. One of which is the “Pine Editor”. This is where you can put in a script based on what you want to test. Now you don’t have to be an expert coder for this you can find help and breakdowns of what you are looking for through this TradingView link: Tradingview Pine-Script
That reference library is great if you don’t know what you’re doing. You can easily find some of the tools in there and explanations. There are a lot of good videos on youtube to help you figure it out as well. The premise of this tool is that you can create strategy scripts and also specific indicators for your use and to share.
In the Pine Script, you are backtesting these strategies to see how they did in the past so you can figure out a strategy to use in the future. There are a lot of Youtube videos on this. Here is a strategy, an easy EMA strategy that backtests the crosses. This strategy assumes that when the 20 EMA crosses above the 50 EMA we get long, when it crosses below the 50 EMA we get short. Once you have put in the Pine code you will press “Add to Chart”. In this image we chose to buy or sell 1000 shares, you can change this number to something more realistic if you’d like.
TradingView Strategy Tester
After you have created your Pine Script or found one online somewhere you can test that strategy and what it yields. The Strategy Tester can be found right beside the Pine Editor tab. This will show you how well your strategy has done while you’ve been testing it. The Pine Editor and the Strategy Tester go hand in hand.
You will have to have the strategy enabled for the Strategy Tester to provide any data. If you use the same example as above to add the strategy to the chart, we input 100 shares to buy or sell based on our EMA parameters. We used the SPY as our guinea pig and when you “add to chart” you simply go over to the Strategy Tester to see the performance of the strategy.
There are the majority of the results:
Naturally a human touch as when to sell would held when you have a large profit because turning a substantial gain into a loss is not proper risk management. Overall the Net returns were 12.43% or $12,430. The max loss was large but half of the max gain give or take. An interesting piece of information is the buy and hold return without exiting is 781% or $781,163. Meaning that maybe everyone should just get long SPY?
TradingView Screener & Use
TradingViews has a built-in screener that is easily accessible and used by a lot. Again it can be found in the bottom panel with the Pine Editor and the rest. Here is a screenshot of the Screener, there are colored boxes to explain each of their uses.
Yellow Box: The filter of what is displayed. These are the criteria that show up in the green box. Right now it’s set to “extended hours” so you will see pre-market and post-market data. You can change this to see the performance of the stocks you filter for, the valuation, dividends, etc.
Pink Box: In this area, you will find a pre-saved filter. There is a list of them in the drop-down, from here you can start with “Volume leaders” Which will show you the most active names and the most liquid for the day. You can change the premade filter and save filters of your own.
Blue Box: This box is where you can filter for anything that you want on TradingView. Create your own custom filters.
Green Box: In this area, you will find the results of your filter, organized based on which selection you have at the top (yellow box) From here you can navigate through all of your options.
Take a look at this TPA Screener video for more info on the TradingView Screener.
The Screener itself (blue box) looks like the following:
There are 4 main tabs at the top.
- All: which is all of the screeners put into one. This will give you a long list of options which you may not want to go through.
- Descriptive: This gives you only the descriptive portion of your screen. If you are looking for a stock based on sector, index, market cap, volume, etc.
- Fundamental: You can select a filter based on the fundamentals of a company, the P/E ratio, and more.
- Technical: You can filter based on technical analysis. For example, moving averages or patterns.
Trading on TradingView
The final portion of this article will break down the trading capabilities of TradingView. We hinted to this before. Where we talked about using TradingView.
The short answer is, you can either use TradingView to trade or you can use it only for the charting aspect.
Trading on TradingView can be through the following brokers:
There used to be more brokers on the platform, like CQG for futures trading. However, there have been changes made.
You can:
- Paper trading: A demo account for people to practice trading.
- Oanda: A FX and CFD broker
- Gemini: A crypto-specific broker
- FXCM: A FX and CFD broker
The other alternative is to use a different broker like Interactive Brokers and trade on that broker but use TradingView as the charting platform. Which is a personal favorite at TRADEPRO Academy. The data can be bought through TradingView and the trades placed on a third-party broker. The reason for this is that TradingView has extremely easy charting to use, it’s accessible and clean.
If you want to learn more about TradingView and how you can set it up to trade stock, options, and futures, check us out at TRADEPRO Academy.
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The information contained in this post is solely for educational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. The risk of trading in securities markets can be substantial. You should carefully consider if engaging in such activity is suitable for your own financial situation. TRADEPRO AcademyTM is not responsible for any liabilities arising as a result of your market involvement or individual trade activities.