Setting Up Your Workspace
TradingView's free tier is sufficient for basic charting, but serious traders should upgrade to Essential ($12.95/mo) or Plus ($24.95/mo) for more indicators, alerts, and multi-chart layouts. Connect to your exchange (Binance, Coinbase, Bybit) for the most accurate price data.
Essential Chart Setup
Start with a clean candlestick chart on the daily timeframe. Add: (1) Volume indicator at the bottom, (2) 50-day and 200-day simple moving averages, (3) RSI (14) for momentum, (4) MACD for trend confirmation. This "standard stack" works for 90% of trading scenarios.
Custom Pine Script Indicators
TradingView's Pine Script lets you create custom indicators. Here's a simple BTC dominance correlation script to add to any altcoin chart:
//@version=5 indicator("BTC Corr") btc = request.security("BITSTAMP:BTCUSD", timeframe.period, close) corr = ta.correlation(close, btc, 20) plot(corr, "BTC Correlation", corr > 0.7 ? color.green : color.red)
Multi-Timeframe Analysis
The professional approach: identify the trend on the weekly/daily (higher timeframe), find entry points on the 4h/1h (medium timeframe), and execute on the 15m/5m (lower timeframe). All three must align for a high-probability setup.
Alert System
Set price alerts, indicator alerts (RSI crossing 30/70), and custom condition alerts. TradingView sends notifications via app, email, and webhook (for automated trading bots). Never trade without alerts — they free you from staring at charts all day.
