TradingView: How to Use the Platform for Trading

TradingView gives you an online platform for charts and market analysis, used by millions of traders worldwide. In it you can watch quotes, draw levels, place indicators and even trade on a demo account for free. I have used it since 2013 and for volume analysis consider it very convenient.

TradingView is the program I sit in every day, and I have no complaints about it. For a beginner it is convenient because you can start for free and right in the browser, installing nothing. But like any tool, it is important to use it wisely. The main beginner's mistake here is drowning in hundreds of indicators instead of learning to read the chart itself. It is this we will talk about.

In this article we'll cover:

• in TradingView you can start for free right in the browser, without installation;
• for me the main tool here is not the indicators but the bar chart and volume;
• a demo account with 100,000 dollars is available on any plan, including the free one;
• paid plans remove the limits, but a beginner need not rush to buy them.

Let's start with what TradingView even is and how it is useful.

What Is TradingView and How Is It Useful to a Trader

TradingView is a browser platform for building charts and analyzing financial markets, where quotes of stocks, currencies, cryptocurrencies and futures, drawing tools, indicators and its own scripting language are gathered.

How it is useful in practice. First, everything in one place: you open a tab and immediately see any market, can lay down levels and save the markup. Second, you can really start for free, without installing programs. There is also a paid scripting language, Pine Script, on which you write your own indicators, but a beginner does not need it. If you are only choosing a trading platform, TradingView is a reasonable starting point: you learn on it, and you can trade later through a connected broker. There is also a social part: a feed of ideas where traders publish breakdowns, screeners for selecting assets and alerts on levels. Useful, but for a beginner it is secondary. First the chart and volume, the rest later.

How to Set Up Charts and Indicators in TradingView

The setup is simple. You choose an instrument, set the needed timeframe and switch the chart type. I work not on candles but on bars: they show the same thing, the open, close, high and low, but visually distract less. Then I lay down levels right on the chart and save the markup, so as not to build it again.

Now about indicators, since it is put in the heading. In TradingView there are thousands of them, from RSI to moving averages. But I will say it straight: I use almost nothing from that list. The only indicator I always have at the bottom of the chart is volume. Volume is the activity and interest toward price, and for me it is more informative than any formula derived from price. More on why I gave up most indicators there is separate material. And how exactly to set up the chart and terminal for volume analysis I show step by step in the video on setting up TradingView.

The Demo Account in TradingView: How to Start Trading for Free

Here is the function I consider the most useful for a beginner. In TradingView there is a demo account, also called paper trading, that is a training account with real quotes but virtual money. It is available on any plan, including the free one, and does not require a card. The starting balance there is 100,000 virtual dollars, and it can be reset at any moment and started over.

You can trade on it in stocks, currencies, crypto and futures, all as on a real account, only with virtual money. Opening it is simple: you set up a free account, open the trading panel at the bottom of the chart and choose the demo account, no documents or deposits are needed. Then you place trades right from the chart, and the platform counts the result and keeps a history that shows the real statistics of your actions. So I advise a beginner not to rush to a real account. First work the system out on a demo, gather at least a hundred trades and make sure the result is stable. The demo account at once shows whether your system is ready: if there is no steady plus on the virtual account, then on the real one there will be even less. How to open a training account and what to do on it is covered in detail in the free course.

My Take: Read the Chart Before You Reach for Indicators

For a beginner the main mistake is drowning in hundreds of indicators instead of learning to read the chart itself, and that is the conviction I have held since I have been trading since 2013: bars rather than candles, volume at the bottom, and almost nothing else. This is not advice for you personally, it is how I would act: work the system out on the demo first, where mistakes cost nothing, since on a real account they cost money. The honest limitation is that a single volume indicator gives you far fewer ready-made signals than a screen full of oscillators, and that emptiness is uncomfortable at first; but a derivative of price always lags price, while volume shows the activity behind the move, so for me the bare chart plus volume reads the market better than ten formulas layered on top of it.