TradingView – A charting application or a social network? – Op Ed

By Michael Buchbinder, Managing Director, Scandinavian Capital Markets

TradingView is a top-rated charting application, used by millions of traders worldwide. The platform commands a robust following from all niches of the online trading world. TradingView attracts forex, CFD, cryptocurrency, futures, options and stock traders from every corner of the market 

You might wonder, why TradingView is so popular amongst different categories of traders. How is it possible to cater to them all? 

The success of TradingView stems from the many social components integrated inside the charting application.  

TradingView contains a rich set of features that most trading platforms struggle to contend with. There is a wide variety of chart types, workspace customization options, indicators and controls. This premier platform excels with annotation tools and chart objects. The application supports dozens of patterns, geometric shapes, Fibonacci, Gann, prediction and measurement tools. All of these accessories make TradingView a well-rounded application for setting up and sharing trade ideas, theories and analysis. 

TradingView Ideas Stream

The number of annotation features available inside TradingView make it ideal for traders to apply and disseminate their idea. Besides the many powerful tools available, TradingView introduced several community-oriented features, allowing users to share ideas.  

At the centre of TradingView’s community is the Ideas Stream. Members can share their chart setups and backtests with a description. Much like a social network, others can like, share, follow and comment on posts. Not only can you follow specific users, trading pairs, markets, or types of analysis, but also you can actively search for ideas in the feed. There is even a feature which shows past ideas plotted on charts.  

While it might seem strange to take trading suggestions from complete strangers on the internet, TradingView makes it easy to report users and their posts, creating a self-policing community. One brilliant feature is the ability to show recent market data on older trade ideas.

For example, if you find a trade idea from 5 days ago and want to see how accurate it was, you can hit a play button, which loads new bars. Instead of having to compare two charts against one another, you’re able to see how the idea played out at the click of a button.

TradingView Community Features

Although the Ideas Stream is one of the centerpieces of the TradingView community, the platform offers many other networking features including: 

• Public chat rooms
• Private messaging
• Live streaming
• User profiles

A Professional Network for Traders

It must be said, there is no place on the web quite like TradingView. While other social networks, messaging applications and online forums provide habitation to trading communities, none of them come close to offering what TradingView does.  

Besides having so many trading-orientated features, many users appreciate that TradingView is all business, comparing them to the “Linkedin of trading”. You won’t find any memes, home-video fails, random news articles or dogs doing funny stuff. 

While you’re chit-chatting with your peers, you never feel disconnected from the markets. TradingView streams price updates, news, market sentiment and more. 

Trading on TradingView

Yes, everything in this article probably makes TradingView sound miraculous that no other trading platform to compete with it. Here’s the thing, TradingView isn’t a trade execution platform. They make their money in a couple of ways.  The platform displays ads in the application. Additionally, they sell subscriptions to traders who want an ad-free version with some premium features. It means you will still need to execute your trades in MetaTrader 4 or cTrader.  

You’ve probably seen TradingView charts and widgets all over the place –  in forex trading platforms, crypto exchanges, or embedded on many investing websites. That’s because TradingView offers a charting library for platform developers to use their products and widgets for new sites and blogs to embed on their websites. 

Should you be on TradingView?

Even though you can’t execute trades like you can with Scandinavian Capital Markets, TradingView can be an inspiring community to get involved in. It allows you to connect and engage with traders from around the world, share and collaborate on ideas while staying in tune with the markets.