Stage 1 Introduction – Tradingview Setup
A trader will not just look at the charts and guess whether to buy or sell, all good traders will work with a strategy or ‘an edge’ that will help them get in front of the market. In this strategy we will be teaching a technical analysis, swing based strategy that will provide us with the edge we need to benefit from the market moves.
However, like a tradesman will have a toolbox to undergo their profession – a trader will have his analytical software to refine his edge. This is where we use an online trading platform called Tradingview.
Trading view is our go-to platform to analyse the charts on, traders can use software such as MT4 and other broker platforms for analysis however we have found that Tradingview offers the cleanest, most professional trading experience and we’ll jump into why later in the strategy.
All people within this community should ideally be using Tradingview – we say this because trading can be confusing enough for beginners, if we begin to use other charting software it will make it really confusing for new traders who have recently joined and gone over our strategy.
First thing you’ll need to do is head to www.tradingview.com
Once you’re on this page you’ll need to register for an account using the top right ‘register’.
Tradingview pro?
Tradingvew makes their money through ad revenue and subscription revenue. To remove ads you’ll need to get a pro membership – this will cost around £14 a month.
We highly recommend you buy the Paid version of Tradingview pro because it gives the user the ability to use the ‘replay tool’ on the smaller time frames which is incredibly beneficial for later in the strategy when we put what we have learnt to work.
Also, not having ads pop up will make your time on the charts so much cleaner and less distracting, think of Tradingview pro like a cost of doing business. Like a shop would have rent to drive commerce a trader will have small expenditure to trade on the live markets.
You can purchase Tradingview pro through this link: https://tradingview.go2cloud.org/SH4Jp
Indicator and tool configuration
Within the strategy we will be using primarily technical analysis to enter trades. In order to use technical analysis we must configure our analytical tools correctly and must understand what each one does and how to use them.
This strategy revolves around technical analysis – think of indicators as a workman's toolbox. A workman wouldn’t go to work without his tools, using the correct tool for the job – it’s the same in trading. A Technical Trader would not place a trade without multiple confluences of technical analysis in place.
From the Tradingview Setup video you should by now have all the tools set up ready to analyse the charts. The first tool we’ll be covering is probably the most used tool in this strategy and that is the trend line tool.
Trend lines
By definition, “a trendline is a line connecting two or more lowes or two or more highs, with the lines projected out into the future”
Ideally, traders look at these extended lines and trade on prices reacting around them, trading a bounce off the trendline and this is exactly what we will be doing. Buy low, sell high or.
.. or Buy the high and sell the low
Remember trendlines are subjective, one of the worst mistakes a Trade can make is ‘marrying their trendlines’ thinking price will always bounce from a trendline. There are $5 trillion dollars traded daily on the fx market that is a lot of traders using different analytical tools and trendlines!Another point to note, we will be using trendlines for marking out significant areas of liquidity and also breaks of highs and lows. You may throughout the strategy see ‘BOH’ or ‘BOL’ attached to a trendline, this is us labelling when the market has broken a significant high (BOH) or broken a significant low (BOL)
For this strategy we have our trendlines set to black with the thickness remaining the same as default.
Rectangle tool
Next up we have the rectangle tool, we will use the rectangle tool to place around areas of liquidity as well as areas of order blocks. We will also use it to highlight areas of interest when breaking down trade setups. We often use the rectangle tool to highlight areas where I expect price action to reverse.
For this strategy we will have our rectangle tool opacity set to 30%
Arrow
‘The arrow’ isn’t really an analytical tool; we will be using it more for forecasting price movement and explaining in our Slack community. We often use the arrow tool to portray my analysis and highlight where I believe price action will be going in the future. It is an analytical tool that will help our community understand your analysis.
Brush
Similarly to the arrow tool, we will be using the brush tool to forecast price movement and backtest price movement. Both of these will be covered in videos later in the series.
It doesn't matter too much what colour your drawing tools are set to as long as you and others can understand your analysis.
To summarise, Tradingview will be your primary tool used to trade the online markets. The team over at Tradingview have done an excellent job in making the platform as fluid and welcoming as possible especially to newer traders. If used correctly, it can be an incredibly powerful tool in our arsenal. As Technical traders we will be using this software everyday to update our watchlist and keep our skills sharp so before we dive deeper into Stage 1 It is worth having a play around on the charting software to get familiar with everything it has to offer.