TradingView Alerts to MT4 MT5 - Forex, indices, commodities

25 Jan 2021

Howdy Algo-Traders! This example script has been created for educational purposes - to present how to use and automatically execute TradingView Alerts on real markets.

I'm posting this script today for a reason. TradingView has just released a new feature of the PineScript language - ALERT() function. Why is it important? It is finally possible to set alerts inside PineScript strategy-type script, without the need to convert the script into study-type. You may say triggering alerts straight from strategies was possible in PineScript before (since June 2020), but it had its limitations. Starting today you can attach alert to any custom event you might want to include in your PineScript code.

With the new feature, it is easier not only to execute strategies, but to maintain codebase - having to update 2 versions of the code with each single modification was... ahem... inconvenient. Moreover, the need to convert strategy into study also meant it was required to rip the code from all strategy...() calls, which carried a lot of useful information, like entry price, position size, and more, definitely influencing results calculated by strategy backtest. So the strategy without these features very likely produced different results than with them. While it was possible to convert these features into study with some advanced "coding gymnastics", it was also quite difficult to test whether those gymnastics didn't introduce serious, bankrupting bugs.

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How does this new feature work? It is really simple. On your custom events in the code like "GoLong" or "GoShort", create a string variable containing all the values you need inside your alert and this string variable will be your alert's message. Then, invoke brand new alert() function and that's it (see lines 67 onwards in the script). Set it up in CreateAlert popup and enjoy. Alerts will trigger on candle close as freq= parameter specifies. Detailed specification of the new alert() function can be found in TradingView's PineScript Reference (tradingview.com/pine-script-reference/v4/ but there's nothing more than message= and freq= parameters. Nothing else is needed, it is very simple. Yet powerful :)

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Alert syntax in this script is prepared to work with TradingConnector. Strategy here is not too complex, but also not the most basic one: it includes full exits, partial exits, stop-losses and it also utilizes dynamic variables calculated by the code (such as stop-loss price). This is only an example use case, because you could handle variety of other functionalities as well: conditional entries, pending entries, pyramiding, hedging, moving stop-loss to break-even, delivering alerts to multiple brokers and more.

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This script is a spin-off from my previous work, posted over a year ago here: tradingview.com/script/9MJO3AgE-TradingView-Alerts-to-MT4-MT5-dynamic-variables-NON-REPAINTING/. Some comments on strategy parameters have been discussed there, but let me copy-paste most important points:
* Commission is taken into consideration.
* Slippage is intentionally left at 0. Due to shorter than 1 second delivery time of TradingConnector, slippage is practically non-existing.
* This strategy is NON-REPAINTING and uses NO TRAILING-STOP or any other feature known to be causing problems.
* The strategy was backtested on EURUSD 6h timeframe, will perform differently on other markets and timeframes.

Despite the fact this strategy seems to be still profitable, it is not guaranteed it will continue to perform well in the future. Remember the no.1 rule of backtesting - no matter how profitable and good looking a script is, it only tells about the past. There is zero guarantee the same strategy will get similar results in the future.

Full specs of TradingView alerts and how to set them up can be found here: tradingview.com/pine-script-docs/en/v4/essential/Alerts.html