TradingView is not only a great platform when it comes to charting and having all your daily trading in once place, it also comes with a variety of features and functions that allow you to create an effective feedback-loop. We’ll show you how to utilize some of TradingView’s features so that you can work on your trading and improve your skills at the same time.
Trade Ideas
We briefly touched on this in our earlier TradingView guides. TradingView’s “Idea” function allows you to capture your trade ideas, hence the name, and organize them in a very effective way. Basically, with an Idea in TradingView you take a snapshot of current market activity with your thoughts, directional bias and more and then store it into your idea stream. You can then use it during your trading day or for your review process – we’ll show you how.
Publishing trade ideas
Publishing a trade idea is very straight forward and we walk you through the process and provide some tips on how to create ideas in the most effective way.
(1) In the bottom right you find the button “Publish Idea” which will open up a new window which is the general input area for your idea. By clicking on the three dots “…” next to it, you can also choose to publish a private idea which is only visible to you.
(2) First you create a title for the idea. We suggest using something that describes your overall idea so that you can recognize it later easily. (3) Then you capture your thoughts and your view on the chart. It’s always a good idea to use bullet points and keep it short and precise to make the review process faster later on. (4) Next you chose your bias. Is your idea bullish (long), bearish (short), or neutral? You can also link your new idea to older ideas of yours (5). This is especially helpful if you link it to past ideas on the same market. You can also tag your ideas (6) which makes the review process even easier. And finally, you publish your trade idea (7).
Ideas Stream
All your ideas are then stored in the so-called “Idea Stream”. For example, you can view all ideas on the oil market here: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/USOIL/ or you can go to your own profile and see all your published ideas.
However, there is much more to the idea stream. First, you can look through all ideas that other traders have created on different markets (1). To filter through the mass, you can switch between different markets and time frames (2). Click on “Everyone” and you can switch between your own ideas only, ideas from traders you follow or from all traders.
And when you then scroll down, you get to the stream where you’ll see the individual ideas.
Tips when creating ideas
When it comes to creating ideas and storing them for later review, there are a few things and features in TradingView that can help you make it more meaningful.
Keep in mind that the goal of an idea is it to capture a market snapshot with your current thought process and your trading plan for the near, or long-term future.
Here are our tips for creating the best trade ideas that will make your review process easier and effective:
Annotations
Annotations are text boxes you place on your charts with things you want to remember and make easily accessible. Typically, annotations are just explanations of certain levels, zones or other important areas.
Split charts for MTF
We recommend creating ideas using split charts. This means that you use your lower, execution time frame on the left and a higher time frame on the right. It’s very important to not forget about the higher time frame situation when making trading decisions. When creating an idea using split charts, you will be able to remember your overall chart and trade idea much better.
Arrows and path of price
Arrows are great to map out your trading plan. Typically, you’d draw arrows on your charts that describe the way you’d want to enter a trade and where you see a potential exit. You can combine arrows and annotations to capture specific trade ideas which make the review process very efficient.
Alerts
Alerts are great tools that help you stay on top of things. You can create alerts based on specific price levels and then get notified when price crosses above/below them. This way you are not glued to your screen all day long and you are also less likely to miss trades later on.
Tip: You can even customize your alert message and end it to your email or phone. Remind yourself in the alert which trade idea to check so that you remember what your trade idea was.
Text Notes
Text notes are another feature in TradingView that allows you to capture your thoughts and ideas. The “Text Notes” button at the bottom (1) opens the editor. You can create new ideas (2) and then capture your thoughts in the editor (3).
The notes editor is great if you quickly want to capture notes where you don’t want to create a new idea.
Reviewing ideas
When you have created your ideas, TradingView offers the possibility to go through your old ideas and then replay them. This means that you can select your old idea, see the screenshot of the market at the time you created the idea and then hit the “Play” button at the right to see what has happened since then.
We recommend going through your past ideas at least once per week to see how things have played out and whether your analysis was correct or not. The replay function is a great way to find out how good your analytical skills are and it helps you work on your skills at the same time.
Too often, traders forget about their initial trade ideas and they get so caught up in the day to day price action. With the help of the replay function, you can actually see how accurate your predictions were and you can get ideas on how to improve your trading approach.
There is a substantial risk of loss in futures trading. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
