If you want to create a successful algorithmic trading bot and make it perform consistently, using Pine Script is important although not essential. It also requires noting that learning how to code and write complex scripts helps with sorting out the minutia of some strategies but won’t be necessary to reliably produce good trading signals.
What is TradingView scripting?
Many experts believe that the biggest advantage of TradingView as an analytical platform is that it utilizes many web 2.0 concepts by integrating user-generated content into its expansive library of tools. Thousands of active community members regularly update a variety of custom indicators available publicly to anyone interested.
Every single idea that you can find in the public library should be tested separately. You cannot blindly trust all public technical analysis scripts for TradingView. The easiest way to test how they work is by running them in the Strategy Tester, a special system that tests strategies against the market history and shows how many high-quality signals would have been produced if you used it as is to trade the asset in the past.
While the Strategy Tester works well and often provides useful insights to traders, you should try to learn TradingView scripting language to better understand the inner workings of any given strategy. The very first tip for those interested in this language is to learn how it works to read what other power users are doing when building their custom indicators.
The current version of Pine Script is 4. It allows users to use many things with the chart and build advanced indicators that can be used as overlays, hidden alerts, or oscillators.
Here are some interesting features:
- Strategies. You can write complex analytical strategies that incorporate multiple custom and preset indicators. Scripts annotated as “Strategy” will be executed once when conditions are met, but you can turn them into loops or annotate them as “Study” to create a never ending script that runs for every new candle or bar on the chart.
- Alerts. One of the most prominent features of the TradingView platform is the ability to create alerts that can be used by third-party providers as triggers for automated trading systems. These can also act as simple notifications informing you about important market events. Pine Script allows you to create unique alerts that will be activated only under very specific circumstances.
- Bar states. Timing is everything for a good technical analysis strategy. This feature allows users to easily select which bars to use and when to execute the script. You may be interested in the dynamics involving moments when bars start forming or when they represent a historical context. The variety of options that you can use is quite rich.
- Non-standard chart types. It is possible that you were trained to use different styles of bars or believe that different ways to present charts and historical information are better than standard ones. Pine Script allows you to use a variety of chart types including Heikinashi, Renko, Kagi, Pointfigure, and more.
- Arrays. Many people who are familiar with coding languages will recognize the importance of using arrays to store data for quick access. Note that you shouldn’t equate a series of data points used to represent historic values for a certain parameter to arrays which can be formed with different types of data to be used in the script.
There are many other interesting features that you should learn if you are interested in Algorithmic trading with TradingView. However, these are unique to the TradingView platform and allow you to write scripts faster and better than what can be achieved with other coding tools and languages.
Building trading indicators with TradingView
The main purpose of Pine Script is to allow power users to write their unique custom indicators that may be based on a multiple standard indicators or provide a completely new way of looking at the historical market data. If you want to analyze the market in a way that allows you to see valuable trading opportunities unrecognizable to others, you should be trying to learn how to code in Pine Script to use price action and trading volume data in a novel way.
Pine Script also supports different types of inputs. While many retail traders are used to the idea of seeing the market through the lens of price and volume dynamics, it is possible to use other types of data for analysis. For example, TradingView scripts allow you to input colors, numbers, integers, floats, and strings to make your analysis more sophisticated.
Any trading bot crypto traders use regularly will be enhanced with some additional tinkering. Pine script allows you to dig much deeper and account for various inputs that otherwise would have been considered only as an afterthought.
Some TradingView script examples
Creating a new strategy is a relatively simple process since the syntax in Pine Script simplifies many commands making it easier to comprehend and write for someone without any background in coding. For example, a simple strategy may look something like this:
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//@version=4
strategy (“buy_sell”)
if bar_index < 100
strategy.entry (“buy”, strategy.long, 10, when=strategy.position_size <= 2)
strategy.entry (“buy”, strategy.short, 10, when=strategy.position_size > 1)
plot (strategy.equity)
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In this example, the first line describes the current version of Pine Script. The “Strategy” annotation tells the TradingView platform that you are using a strategy instead of a study. The “if” operator dictates that the script should be activated on each new bar.
Strategy.entry is used to describe when a script will execute an action. Here, it will start buying once you have less than two open positions. It will sell when you have more than one open position. The strategy will create two market positions (1 lot or unit at a time) and start selling until you have only 1 position left.
The results of your strategy will be plotted as equity line representing the change in your balance when used with this strategy.
You can create complex automated trading strategies with TradingView and apply them to any chart. It is a powerful tool that helps retail traders build unique solutions and trade by relying on their understanding of the market often formed by years of intense trading and investing. On the other hand, many enthusiasts engage in script writing just for the sake of it. Often, you will find incredibly sophisticated strategies written by hobbyists and brave experimenters.
TradingView script optimization
People who do not have any prior coding experience tend to write bloated scripts that work slower or have redundant lines. Sometimes, unnecessary additions and excessive writing can cause errors and unintended consequences. Making your script lightweight is quite important just as getting rid of things that make it less productive or defective.
Pine Script has multiple debugging options allowing users to quickly identify code that was written with errors. You may choose a wide range of different approaches and make sure that outputs are shown as intended and calculated properly.
The debugging process if often quite lengthy and requires help from experienced users if you feel that you hit a wall and cannot make your script work well. Talking with community members and looking for answers in many forum threads are often the only ways to fix something in your script. It is strongly recommended to participate in the community and build relationships with experienced coders.
One of the best features of Pine Script is that it is essentially integrated with charts allowing users to quickly identify defective code by simply running a strategy on the chart immediately after you finish writing. However, the variety of debugging methods may feel overwhelming to new users who do not have any experience with Pine.
Should you learn Pine Script?
It is hard to find an automation vendor that does not work with TradingView. This charting instrument is the best in the market. It offers a wide range of different analytical tools and the opportunity to create inventive indicators capable of using different types of data to produce reliable trading signals. It is essential to understand how the platform works to use automation effectively.
It is possible to run bots that perform outstandingly well without learning how to code in Pine. However, you will be able to choose new exciting strategies created by power users or finely tune some of the indicators if you understand the scripting language and learn how to make small adjustments.
Retail traders interested in maximizing the efficiency of TradingView automated trading systems will benefit greatly from writing custom code or reviewing public projects written by experienced power users of the platform.
We strongly recommend all retail traders who want to utilize automated trading systems of any complexity to look into learning Pine Script on at least some basic level to comprehend the cause and effect of any public strategy that you plan to use to trigger bots.