TradingView review: "Screw 'em!"

[tommcginnis]

OMG. The TIME I have wasted.
The VALUABLE time I have wasted.
Tradingview is just SO not ready for Prime-time.
Dirt for balanced operators, crap for documentation, poor-ass in execution-without-quirks.

I went there because I thought I could easily access historical data not available from IB/TWS (except via the dive into the itself-quirky API), and that it would be easier than hunting up data online, and then putting together the analytics in a spreadsheet for {thereafter} easy modification, manipulation, etc.

I have ended up investing *much* more time in this losing proposition than would've been put into a spreadsheet. The (EOD) data I've found on the glorious Investing.Com. The analytics (standard MACD/ADX/"T/A" sorts of things) will be doable in no time. Trade signals? Elementary. Accruing PnL? Pffff. WTF was I thinking?

Screw it! (You know, it really takes me a bit to throw in the towel. Well, it be thrown.)
I'll be crafting my own.

 

[GRULSTMRNN]

Do you mind, other than moaning, to provide some details of your gripes? Isn't this a web chart provider? Not a broker, not anything else. Chart porn for the masses. I am amazed you even considered this for anything other than a quick price history lookup in chart format while being on the road.

OMG. The TIME I have wasted.
The VALUABLE time I have wasted.
Tradingview is just SO not ready for Prime-time.
Dirt for balanced operators, crap for documentation, poor-ass in execution-without-quirks.

I went there because I thought I could easily access historical data not available from IB/TWS (except via the dive into the itself-quirky API), and that it would be easier than hunting up data online, and then putting together the analytics in a spreadsheet for {thereafter} easy modification, manipulation, etc.

I have ended up investing *much* more time in this losing proposition than would've been put into a spreadsheet. The (EOD) data I've found on the glorious Investing.Com. The analytics (standard MACD/ADX/"T/A" sorts of things) will be doable in no time. Trade signals? Elementary. Accruing PnL? Pffff. WTF was I thinking?

Screw it! (You know, it really takes me a bit to throw in the towel. Well, it be thrown.)
I'll be crafting my own.

 

[TrendSpider_Dan]

Tommcginnis, as a charting software vendor, I'd also love to hear some details as well. Thanks!

 

[tommcginnis]

Do you mind, other than moaning, to provide some details of your gripes? Isn't this a web chart provider? Not a broker, not anything else. Chart porn for the masses. I am amazed you even considered this for anything other than a quick price history lookup in chart format while being on the road.

Not interested in detailing -- no. I'm (nearly) done with it. At least for now.

It is a web chart provider; it is aspiring to or has already developed live-trade abilities. "Chart porn for the masses" is a great description -- but also (and key for me), it is "Backtest for the masses." And too, as it's a public/free site with a fair-sized community, sharing results is easy -- another biggie. And although IB/TWS seems to be available throughout weekend hours now, for most of the past decade, that has not been the case (and frankly, I don't think it's reliable access, either).

Right now, I have figured out that while I could write a strategy and with some gyrations get it graph the backtest correctly, it was in the empirical results (PnL and trade statistics) that if failed most egregiously. And, with more thought, I've figured out that it would be a real bear to graph "candlesticks" via a standard spreadsheet. So! I'll use TradingView to generate charts, and a spreadsheet fueled by Investing.com data to confirm the TV charts (and charted entrys/exits), and then generate PnL.

FWIW, if you want to see issues in action,
☼ attempt a basic trend/SMA/EMA study (there are multiple forms available -- careful!)
☼ turn it into a strategy by declaring buy/sell//entry/exit signals.
☼ look up any issues in the available documentation
☼ simplify your backtest to just the last 2-3 years.

TradingView is a neat idea -- but it's a barely-Beta product on the market as a for-pay. (It's $0/$10/$20/$40/month, depending on desired features.) If it lived up to it's hype, it'd be worth twice that, IMO.

 

[GRULSTMRNN]

In my book you got two choices for strategy development/testing/automation:

If you possess programming capabilities and are willing to 8nvest time and effort then write your own system. If that does not apply to you then go with an off the shelf product such as Rightedge or Ninja or the likes. Those always come with limitations but also with a free trial if you get my drift.

Using Trading view to test strategies or visualize performance metrics is imho an insane attempt.

Not interested in detailing -- no. I'm (nearly) done with it. At least for now.

It is a web chart provider; it is aspiring to or has already developed live-trade abilities. "Chart porn for the masses" is a great description -- but also (and key for me), it is "Backtest for the masses." And too, as it's a public/free site with a fair-sized community, sharing results is easy -- another biggie. And although IB/TWS seems to be available throughout weekend hours now, for most of the past decade, that has not been the case (and frankly, I don't think it's reliable access, either).

Right now, I have figured out that while I could write a strategy and with some gyrations get it graph the backtest correctly, it was in the empirical results (PnL and trade statistics) that if failed most egregiously. And, with more thought, I've figured out that it would be a real bear to graph "candlesticks" via a standard spreadsheet. So! I'll use TradingView to generate charts, and a spreadsheet fueled by Investing.com data to confirm the TV charts (and charted entrys/exits), and then generate PnL.

FWIW, if you want to see issues in action,
☼ attempt a basic trend/SMA/EMA study (there are multiple forms available -- careful!)
☼ turn it into a strategy by declaring buy/sell//entry/exit signals.
☼ look up any issues in the available documentation
☼ simplify your backtest to just the last 2-3 years.

TradingView is a neat idea -- but it's a barely-Beta product on the market as a for-pay. (It's $0/$10/$20/$40/month, depending on desired features.) If it lived up to it's hype, it'd be worth twice that, IMO.

 

[tommcginnis]

Using Trading view to test strategies or visualize performance metrics is imho an insane attempt.

I want to agree with you, but I can't quite get there.

On a professional level, you're certainly correct -- TV does not carry the performance necessary to put $1 on a live trade. But I was using it because it promised a better solution than me drawing-by-eye on IB/TWS graphs, and trying to ballpark numbers from there. It also promised to be quicker than a roll-your-own solution -- something that anyone who trades via IB/TWS does anyway. It boils down to a pretty low bar for TV to clear. (All this development is pretty fun, but timewise, pretty costly, too. "Production!" Yipes!)

As I get more comfortable that my long-market-notions are worthy of trading capital, the trading-technology bar will get raised higher and higher -- and you're right: I'll probably roll-my-own in the end, as I have with index options. But that decision itself will be better informed because of the work I've done in 2018. Going from a nose-to-screen trader to taking (and even promoting) EOD signals for once-a-day trading -- that's a pretty massive change.

So, for where things are at now, TradingView (and the like) is just fine, or would be, if it worked as advertised. But my original post tells you what I think of TV as a professional. "No way."

 

[KeLo]

OMG. The TIME I have wasted.
The VALUABLE time I have wasted.WTF was I thinking?

Screw it! (You know, it really takes me a bit to throw in the towel. Well, it be thrown.)
I'll be crafting my own.

We all have to find our platforms. Reviews are helpful, but nothing beats firsthand knowledge.

Newer platforms tend to be buggy, but some older platforms can be outdated or obsolete.

I wish there was a foolproof way to avoid wasting time with unsuitable platforms. I appreciate your review.

P.S. TV is still worth watching. Maybe they can iron out the bugs.

 

[maxpi]

Tradestation 2000i was available almost 20 years ago. It was optimized for a satellite feed because internet was way too slow at the time, it was plenty fast, the grid application was astounding, the charts were amazing... EZlanguage had a quirk or two that I had to discover the hard way and some things were much harder to code than with C++ but anything you could think of was doable. Not much has ever come close to that package over the last two decades. It had stuff for finding options plays...

 

[IAlwaysWin]

I like TradingView because of the extensive alerting system they have. I can't speak on what you're using it for but I have heard that Tradestation is better for automation purposes.

 

[userque]

Not interested in detailing -- no. I'm (nearly) done with it. At least for now.

It is a web chart provider; it is aspiring to or has already developed live-trade abilities. "Chart porn for the masses" is a great description -- but also (and key for me), it is "Backtest for the masses." And too, as it's a public/free site with a fair-sized community, sharing results is easy -- another biggie. And although IB/TWS seems to be available throughout weekend hours now, for most of the past decade, that has not been the case (and frankly, I don't think it's reliable access, either).

Right now, I have figured out that while I could write a strategy and with some gyrations get it graph the backtest correctly, it was in the empirical results (PnL and trade statistics) that if failed most egregiously. And, with more thought, I've figured out that it would be a real bear to graph "candlesticks" via a standard spreadsheet. So! I'll use TradingView to generate charts, and a spreadsheet fueled by Investing.com data to confirm the TV charts (and charted entrys/exits), and then generate PnL.

FWIW, if you want to see issues in action,
☼ attempt a basic trend/SMA/EMA study (there are multiple forms available -- careful!)
☼ turn it into a strategy by declaring buy/sell//entry/exit signals.
☼ look up any issues in the available documentation
☼ simplify your backtest to just the last 2-3 years.

TradingView is a neat idea -- but it's a barely-Beta product on the market as a for-pay. (It's $0/$10/$20/$40/month, depending on desired features.) If it lived up to it's hype, it'd be worth twice that, IMO.

Which spreadsheet app & version are you using?