Tutorials

Frequently Asked Questions ❓

What is a trading strategy ?

When we refer as a "Trading Strategy" on TradeSearcher, we actually mean a TradingView Strategy (or Script), which is an automated indicator that plot buy and sell signals on your chart.

A regular Trading Strategy mean a trading plan that you follow to make your trades.

TradingView strategies are similar to a trading plan, but they are automated and can be backtested. This is particularly useful to put your ideas into data and backtest them to see if they are profitable and on which symbols and timeframes.You can find more information about TradingView strategies on their website.

What can you do with TradeSearcher ?

TradeSearcher allows you to search for TradingView strategies (scripts) that have already been tested by thousands of other users on various symbols and timeframes.

The search engine allows you to filter strategies by market (crypto, stock, forex), symbol (Bitcoin, EUR/USD), timeframe (5 min, 15 min, 1h..), strategy type (scalping, AI), and more.

This can save you hours of research by looking up quickly on what have been working well in the past and use them for your own purpose.

Let's take a particular example : You are looking to trade Bitcoin (BTCUSD) on the 5 mins timeframe for a short term strategy.Yo could manually test hundreds of strategies on TradingView and make your own calculations, or you can use TradeSearcher to find the best strategies for what you are trying to achieve.

How TradeSearcher work ?

TradeSearcher scans and tests hundreds of strategies for you each day, producing a large number of backtests. It saves you hundreds of hours of work by continuously generating fresh backtests and comparing new strategies. This provides the best possible starting point for algo-trading and finding accurate alerts for your trading plan.

What is the best way to use it ?

We have built TradeSearcher as a tool to help you find new ideas and perfect your own trading plan, you should not blindy follow TradeSearcher or any strategy without proper analysis.

We believe the best traders are the one who knows how to make use of all the tools available to them while also adding their own analysis to it.

Proving signals : One way to use TradeSearcher is as a signal provider. Look out for a trading strategy that match your criteria, and then setups alerts on TradingView to get notified when a buy or sell signal is triggered.

Basing your strategy on it : Another way to use TradeSearcher is as an advisor of which trading strategies currently work well in the market you are looking to trade. For example, you may notice that a particular strategy you like for a given symbol is using RSI/EMA indicators, and you could then use this information to build and perfect your own strategy.

Automate it : Finally, you may use TradeSearcher for automation by selecting strategies that shows a strong backtesting performance and then use them as an automated trading bot or as a base to build your own PineScript strategy based on it by improving it.

What strategies should I choose ?

We recommend sorting by Risk Reward Ratio in the last 3 or 6 months and starting your research from there. If you plan on using strategies for regular trading, applying a filter with a Win Rate > 40% is generally a good idea unless you have a particular strategy in mind. We also recommend trying to find strategies that have at least 100 trades to have a good sample size.

How to use the TradeSearcher app ?

Start by creating an account to access the app, has the static pages for visitors are limited in terms of data.

1. Search for a particular ticker : (Bitcoin, EUR/USD, Apple, etc...) or a market (crypto, stock, forex) you're interested in.

2. Sort/Filter according to your preferences : You then see the result array for your search. Use the filters/columns tab to adjust what you see based on your preferences. You may want to sort by Sharpe Ratio, Risk/Reward or ROI depending on what you are looking for.

3. Watch strategy details : When clicking on a particular strategy, you can see the full performance report of the strategy (on the particular symbol you're looking at). You also see the performance graph that shows how the strategy has performed over time, it's probably the first important data to look at since it shows you the volatility and the global performance in a single graph.

4. Watch the strategy on TradingView : To access the strategy on TradingView for real-time trading or automation, just click the "TradingView" button. Once on TradingView, open the "Indicators" Tab and paste the strategy name (that has been copied to the clipboard) into the search bar. You can then add the strategy to your chart and start using it.

Why are my backtesting results completely different on TradingView and TradeSearcher ?

There are many reasons why your backtesting results may differ between TradingView and TradeSearcher, but the most common ones are:

1. You are not using a Premium TradingView account. Regular TradingView accounts and plans inferior to Premium backtest using 10k bars while Premium plans and above backtest on 20k bars, being more accurate. If you use a lower plan than Premium, your results will be backtested on less data and can differ quite drastically. We also tick the 'Using bar magnifier' parameter on each backtest which can alter results.

2. You are using different parameters. Make sure the parameters of the strategy on TradingView inside the 'Properties' tab are the same as on TradeSearcher in Parameters tab (on the details part of the bottom of each backtest).

3. Backtest has been updated a long time ago. While we try to update backtests regularly, it is possible that the backtest has been updated a long time ago and that the strategy has been updated since then. Make sure to check the last updated date on TradeSearcher in the detail of the backtest (bottom right section).

Are Trading Strategies on TradeSearcher repainting ?

Repainting is a term to describe trading strategies that are (intentionally or not) using future data while calculating each buy/sell signal, in other words it is cheating. It's a common issue with TradingView strategies that can be limited with some preventive techniques

The best way to actually test if a strategy is repainting is by limiting the amount of data it has access to while backtesting it.

All TradeSearcher strategies are backtested with our custom built Anti-Repainting system that analyze the strategy code and limit the amount of data it has access to while backtesting it. This way, we try to limit the obvious repainting strategies, but keep in mind that there is no perfect solution to this problem and that the TradingView backtesting system itself is not perfect. You can learn more about repainting strategies on TradingView website.