Forex trading is increasingly popular among financial market traders of various demographics; people of varying ages and occupations engage in forex trading, leveraging the vast array of powerful charting and analytic tools to make data-driven decisions. Traders, especially retail traders, must access the forex market through trading platforms that broker trades (acting as market makers). Traders often customize their trading platforms to enhance their trading performance.
Introduction to TradingView
One of the biggest trading platforms is TradingView, with millions of users globally. TradingView is a popular and powerful charting platform widely used by investors and traders globally. The platform is user-friendly, and the advanced technical tools, data aggregation, and community provide traders with all they need to be successful in the forex market.
TradingView’s customizable features are particularly beneficial to forex traders. This is a guide to direct you through the process of customizing TradingView for personalized forex trading.
Creating Your TradingView Account
The first step to customizing your TradingView dashboard is to register on the platform via your favorite broker or register on TradingView and link your broker account.
If you register with your broker, you’ll find a link to TradingView (if your broker is compatible). A registered link will take you directly to TradingView, where you can set up your dashboard and customize trading tools.
There are various account plans, from the free basic plan to premium plans with advanced trading tools and additional benefits such as real-time data and more indicators. The tools available on the free basic plan are enough for new traders, but you may need to use premium plans to access more tools as your trading skills increase.
Personalizing Your Chart Layout
Upon registration, the TradingView account opens up to a default chart layout where you can customize various tools and properties.
To begin, click on the “Chart Settings” icon on the top-right corner of the toolbar, and a smaller window will open up with various chart properties that you can customize. You’ll find colors for the candlestick, lines, bars, status lines, scales, canvas, trading, and events.
Here, you can adjust various aspects of your charts, such as color themes, gridlines, chart types, date ranges, and backgrounds. You can customize the entire layout to suit your trading experience. To minimize confusion, you must use simple colors you can work with as a beginner.
Adding Forex Pairs to Your Watchlist
The next step is to identify the forex pairs you want to trade and add them to your customizable watchlist as preferred forex pairs. You can do this from the “Watchlist, details, and news” tab in the right-side panel. The tab opens up with a few forex pairs. You’ll see a ‘+’ button labeled “Add Symbol”; a smaller window opens with assets from all financial markets when you click it. Locate and click the “Forex” tab to see all currency pairs, from majors to minors and exotics.
Each pair has a broker name in front of it; locate the pair available on your broker and click the ‘+’ button to add the pair to your watchlist. Adding pairs on your broker is crucial because spreads on the same currency pairs differ from one broker to another.
Customizing Indicator Preferences
image via Pixabay
There are over a hundred pre-built indicators on TradingView, ranging from volume to momentum indicators. These indicators are available in various categories according to the trader’s plan. Traders can access all hands, use indicators from other traders, like the fear and greed indicator, and build indicators using the built-in script feature or import indicators from other sources. To add indicators, locate the “Indicators’ button and select the indicators you want.
You can further customize each indicator by adjusting its parameters, colors, and display settings to suit your trading preferences better. Custom indicators help you stick with your trading strategy and avoid confusion on price alerts. The Strategy, Patterns, and Profiles are mostly only available to premium users.
Creating Personalized Strategies
TradingView allows you to create and test your trading strategies using its native Pine Script. Pine Script is used to create custom trading tools such as indicators, strategies, and alerts on TradingView. Suppose you are skilled in coding or can hire a programmer. In that case, you can create custom indicators for technical analysis, backtest your trading strategies and set up alerts for price and volume movements.
The key is to translate your trading strategies, for example, support and resistance, breakout, and scalping, into code that captures the working principle and can generate accurate signals based on the price movement. Ensure you backtest your scripted indicator before using it to trade live.
Utilizing Drawing Tools and Annotations
Another essential feature you can customize is the drawing tools and annotations, and trendlines available on TradingView. These tools help identify potential entries and exits when trading and highlight important price areas for analysis. Customize the colors and drawing tools to match your trading style, but ensure they are easily distinguishable on your charts.
You can save the settings for future use and the drawing tools for easy access to new charts. This makes it easy for you to recall saved settings on any device.
Setting Up Alerts, Notifications, and Social Features
TradingView allows trailers to customize price alerts and notifications automatically delivered via email, SMS, app notification, and any compatible web platform (via URL integration). You can customize alerts for various prices, time limits, and sounds.
TradingView is a community-driven platform encouraging traders to interact and share ideas, charts, and analyses on its social hub. You can explore the “Ideas” and “Scripts” sections to find and follow other traders who align with your trading philosophy. Interacting with other traders can sharpen your trading skills as you grow.
Customizing your TradingView dashboard and trading tools is a powerful way to optimize your trading experience and improve your performance. Personalizing your chart layout and indicators, adding currency pairs to your watchlist, customizing drawing tools, setting price alerts, and engaging with the TradingView community will help you become a better trader.
As you start trading, continuously refine your trading strategies and skills and adapt your custom settings to fit your growing skill level and the ever-dynamic forex market. TradingView’s customizable platform provides the necessary tools to help you make better data-driven trading decisions.
Featured image credit: Pixabay
