This post is part of a series on how to make the most of the social piece on TradingView. Make sure you don’t miss any of them! We gave tips on creating awesome custom chats, explained how to gain exposure and build reputation and highlighted common user claims moderators can’t help with. Here is the latest topic!
Tradingview is a place where traders, investors, educators and market enthusiasts connect to share ideas and talk about the market. Actively participating accelerates your growth as a trader. There’s no better way to learn than being immersed in an environment that exposes you to many different ideas and strategies. Retail traders are empowered by professional-grade tools, real-time data and helpful ideas that were once available only to professional traders. Using TradingView can boost your knowledge of markets, methods and techniques and allow you to perfect your charting – and trading skills. Insights from the community can help you make profitable decisions. Since trading involves risk, we developed a platform that provides everything you need to responsibly learn and improve as a trader.
We realise that in spite of our efforts and intentions, sometimes members use TradingView and its rich content wrongly and do irresponsible things, inevitably leading to unmet expectations, lost money and in some cases, hardship. We know the stories; we listened to and consoled members who went through this. Our community is growing fast with 1 million+ engaged traders visiting monthly and 1,000+ new members joining daily. Among them are novice traders. This topic is directed especially (though not exclusively) at them, because with common sense and forewarning, certain mistakes can be avoided. We unabashedly stand by our mission of transparency and accountability, so get ready for some real talk based on real cases.
Before we continue, it’s important to note what TradingView is not. TradingView is NOT a signal service and NOT a marketplace for shady third-party content providers. TradingView is a place where people learn from each other and we want every published idea to be meaningful – detailed, descriptive and interesting – this is our main goal. To better understand how to publish ideas that get maximum visibility, please read the post on gaining exposure and building a reputation. Publishing simple signals with little or no explanation contradicts the overall idea of the site. It’s better to ignore such authors, because they probably want to sell you something. Every published idea should give you complete information about the trading method, giving you a chance to understand it and learn from it!
And now, without further ado: here are 5 things you should never do on TradingView.
1) Do not enroll in a training course from a highly rated member, thinking this will make you profitable right away.
Contributors are rated and ranked according to how the community values their contributions. Their reputation shows how much engagement they generate and how active they are, but it’s not a measure whether someone is a good trader or trainer. TradingView does not review, check or guarantee any third-party services promoted on its site. So it’s up to you to exercise due diligence before committing to a training course. Go to the member’s public journal and use our play feature on the last 100 ideas to see how they went. Request course details to review and ask prior students about their experience. Realise that even with a good training, it will take months of practice and a lot of dedication before you could be consistently profitable, if you are talented. There’s no magic pill. So if you don’t want to investigate a course and have an unrealistic expectation, it’s best not to enroll altogether. Just be smart about it!
2) Do not trade popular ideas with real money, expecting easy profits.
No matter how many likes an idea receives, no matter how confident its author may appear, or how high this person is ranked, there is no guarantee the idea will play out as planned. Period. So don’t put your money at risk copying someone else’s trade idea unless you personally reviewed it, understand it and it fits your strategy. If you have no strategy to begin with, then no idea will ever fit it and you should not risk your money. Period. The bottom line is this: someone else’s view should never be relied upon as a substitute for you doing your own analysis before making actual trading decisions. TradingView has a large idea repository for peer-review, to help you develop and improve your own strategy. But don’t mistake popularity for certainty and avoid risking money by copying popular ideas as if their authors can see the future with certainty. You may win a few, but over time you will lose money. Now that’s a bad idea!
3) Do not ask for blind real-time signals in chat, aiming for fast gains.
Every day we see members come to chat, impatiently asking “Can I buy EU now? Please?”, “Can I sell GU? Anyone?” or similar questions on other instruments. They open a real trade as soon as anyone gives an affirmative reply. You won’t learn anything from asking these questions if you don’t see at least a chart snapshot that you can review and either agree with or dismiss. Not knowing the track record or strategy of the replier further adds to this risk. Our public chats offer great opportunities to talk about real-time market conditions and allow you to participate in a fast-paced exchange of opinions, views and analysis about where the market is going. Using them the right way will make you grow as a trader and help you find real opportunities to profit from. But making hurried trading decisions after asking for flimsy trade calls is irresponsible and will only lead to losses. Just don’t do it!
4) Do not buy signals or bots from members without having seen a verified track record.
TradingView has all the features to help you improve your own trading, but if for some reason you are looking to buy signals or “expert advisors” from a member: ask for a verified track record for a substantial period on a real money account. Otherwise you put your trading capital at an unknown risk, which could be significant and you could lose the money for the purchase as well as the funds in the trading account. Promises and sales pitches are no substitute for proven past performance. Remember we don’t check or guarantee any services promoted by our members but there are review sites online and you can always ask to be referred to satisfied members and check with them before committing. Asking for a free trial could further help to reduce the risk. In any case, our advice is to never buy anything from anyone without substantial proof that it actually works. Just say no!
5) Do not blindly follow someone else’s opinion on anything related to your trading.
The social network part of TradingView is big, so there is no lack of opinions on the market or trading. Every day you can find 12,000 chat messages, 750 ideas, 600 comments and 500 snapshots with which other traders express their views. This social piece is top-notch, but with it come risks for novice traders. The risks include picking up bad habits from others, being swayed by popular opinion and succumbing to peer pressure. Risks of doing something you have not given critical thought to, objectively analysed and evaluated yourself. These risks include trading a money account before you are ready, following “insider tips” or vague hunches of others, overtrading due to the abundance of ideas, putting up bigger positions than your account can handle and changing your mind mid-trade. Avoid these risks or you will end up self sabotaging your account and your growth as a trader. Keep calm and think first!
The key driver behind these warnings is the realization that the only person responsible for your wins and losses is you. Not an author who publishes ideas, not a chat visitor who expresses a bias and not a commenter who shares a tip. It is your money you are dealing with, so why would you put decisions regarding that money in someone else’s hands? Do your own analysis and if you don’t know how to do it, learn it first before taking any money related decisions. Never be in a rush to try and win money, because most probably you will lose. We hope you appreciate our candor and that warnings of possible dangers keep you guarded. We at TradingView tell it like it is and it’s hard to find this level of openness in any other community. We uphold this approach from day one and we are proud of it.
Trade safe and thank you for staying with us.
TradingView Founders and Moderators