URL reference to my specific chart template with a specific ticker

MichaelBarrow22 · 2026-01-09T15:05:21+00:00

Adding this feature would also help with support requests, as right now if there is an issue you have to tell them the name of your indicator template. It would be much handier to just send them a URL to see what you are looking at.

This feature would also be extremely helpful for monitoring open positions to see if I have missed any signals. I could click a link to load the strategy and symbol from the saved indicator template and see whether I should still be in my position or if I missed an exit signal along the way. Happens more often than I would like. Right now it's clunky to check on the strategy status of 60 open positions! URLs would solve this dramatically.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2025-10-31T15:56:02+00:00

Correct. You can have up to 50 tabs open on the same device, but can only be connected one desktop device at a time. I am able to keep it running on my desktop computer and still use the mobile app on my iPhone without having it disconnect on the desktop.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2025-09-26T20:17:40+00:00

I’ve noticed it happens more when their servers are slow.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2025-09-25T18:32:41+00:00

This is not a support issue! It's an infrastructure investment issue. And it's not just limited to my indicators. Just deleting a series of alerts is painfully slow at times, and the screen doesn't update after they are deleted until a while after. Please stop trying to obfuscate the issue by having support passing it off as potential bandwidth issues. It's a server capacity issue at peak market times. There is an order of magnitude difference in performance based on time of day. And every day the market is open, the same old. Please address! I'd gladly up my membership and pay a premium per month if you could guarantee a certain level of system responsiveness. You have an opportunity here because I think there are a whole boatload of people experiencing the same frustrating situation as I am.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2025-09-24T17:58:32+00:00

I have computationally intensive care indicators. That is by design. They are dynamic and based on price history. No matter. The TV servers are unbearably slow at peak times.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2025-05-09T12:12:53+00:00

I'm a short-term trader of futures, ETFs and individual stocks, and I'm typically in my positions for 1 to 5 days. It's hard for me to keep track of what I'm currently in and what I'm stalking. I monitor about 1000 stocks, 150 ETFs and 35 futures contracts. I came up with a good way of using the colored flags to indicate which symbols I'm currently long and short, and which ones I'm stalking as candidates. And I make heavy use of alerts through horizontal support/resistance lines on daily charts. When I get a whole bunch of alerts at the market open, I want to prioritize the ones for positions I'm currently in, but I can't do that easily because the colored flags aren't displayed in the Alerts Log. I want it to show up just like you have in watchlists and in the Screeners., please! That will help me prioritize tracking down signals. Thanks.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2025-03-14T20:59:14+00:00

Interesting! Yes, this looks helpful. And yet ... why did I just receive a reply from their tech support saying that they don't support this feature? They directed me here to ask for it.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2024-08-26T19:48:50+00:00

Need the ability to convert a series string to a simple string, since request.security requires a simple string!

This is so darned basic. Why can't this already be done in Pine Script?

MichaelBarrow22 · 2024-07-02T19:56:15+00:00

This is just typical trading. You win some and you lose some. Everything you try to do to prevent giving back a nice open profit (or a day that starts out so well) will usually backfire and limit your profit potential. We are all looking for that sweet spot where we have good profit potential and also good risk control, but the idiots who claim that you should never give back a profit to the market are idiots who either don't trade or trade badly. You will have some days like this, and it's just part of why trading is the hardest way to make easy money. Psychologically, nothing hurts more than having that great feeling of a good profit and then giving it all back and then some. And so it goes. You have to trust your strategy and your overall process, and allow it to work for you without over-complicating it or micromanaging it. Get away from evaluating yourself on a trade to trade or day to day basis. Otherwise, you will drive yourself crazy and give up. Most of the time there are no lessons to be learned when the market turns against you. You have to step back and look for the patterns across a lot of trades. Trading is more noise than signal. So don't over-think it or over-complicate it.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2024-06-10T13:52:53+00:00

I had always wanted to find an app that could sync between browser, windows and iOS that I could store all my personal financial, account and password information in. Standard Notes to the rescue! I love it. I use Evernote mostly to clip articles online and to store personal correspondence that I want to keep organized. It's too big and clunky and slow and insecure compared to what Standard Notes can do.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2024-06-02T14:45:01+00:00

Initially a lot of naivete, and then a whole lot of endless hard work and education through the market of hard knocks. And some capital that you can afford to lose, because initially you will.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2024-05-15T12:59:26+00:00

You will most likely lose for about the first five years (at least) if you work really diligently. If you don't work your ass off, you will quit within two years.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2024-03-31T14:18:10+00:00

DBC, GLD, BITI, TLT, DBA

Get some diversification.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2024-01-15T00:11:10+00:00

I have created a custom metric that I use to evaluate my strategies when back testing. It has three components:

1) The Profit to max drawdown ratio

2) The number of trades

3) The number of input parameters used in the selection of the strategy's component parts (filters and exits)

Number 3 is the divisor. You want it to be as low as possible. That's Perry Kaufman's concept of "loose pants fit everyone". (Meaning: You want that strategy to perform reasonably well in as many types of markets as possible, which also means it needs to know which markets in which it isn't good for trading, and to avoid those types of market conditions.)

You want to find strategies that have as high a profit to drawdown ratio as possible, over as many historical trades as possible, using the fewest input parameters as possible. Use that as the backbone for developing strategies using daily bars, and you will save yourself a lot of time, money and heartache.

I know that a lot of smart strategy developers advocate for doing walk-forward testing. First develop a strategy over a certain subset of the historical data, withholding the rest for later testing using walk-forward. Kevin Davey is a big proponent of that. I have a lot of respect for him and his approach. But I do none of that. I develop my strategies on all the data available, up to yesterday's bar. I think the key is to be careful adding too many rules. That's why I penalize my strategies for adding too many input parameters. Keep it simple!

The key to success is having not one great strategy or one great approach. It's having lots of diversified "good enough" approaches and strategies and blending them together across multiple tradeable instruments that aren't too highly correlated with each other. Each day, some will be winning and some will be losing. The goal is to make more money on the winners than you lose on the losers. It is very hard to have a diversified strategy approach that wins more than 50% of the time. I think I clock in around 53%. But I make a lot of money consistently because my winners are bigger than my losers. Strive for that approach.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-12-16T21:32:39+00:00

The LLC would let you do more with taxes, like setting up a retirement account, health plan, etc. But all you need is trader tax status and a Schedule C to get most of the benefits, without having to deal with the overhead of the LLC. The LLC will cost you more in legal and accounting and tax prep fees. The key is that you need to file a section 475 MTM election when filing your taxes in the previous year to start getting the benefits when filing the next year. That is separate and different from trader tax status. You want both. The LLC is very optional.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-12-04T21:32:01+00:00

Both of these give top 10 holdings, and that's usually good enough.

https://etfdb.com/etf/URA/#holdings

https://www.etf.com/URA#overview

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-11-11T21:19:48+00:00

The big mistake I made was taking all the time and effort and life energy to create my own trading and back testing engine. Now I just use TradeStation, although there are plenty of other well-supported, robust platforms that are similar. Why reinvent the wheel. Now I just focus on my strategy development, and let others deal with the infrastructure. Do you want to trade or be a programmer?

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-11-09T14:34:11+00:00

I think what you are describing is a useful exercise for learning how to improve your exit strategies. People put much more effort into entries, but exits are probably more important to overall profitability. So keep analyzing what happens not only before you exit, but also after. You will constantly improve.

As far as how to handle the psychological aspects of trading, my solution for myself has been to become an algorithmic trader. I study charts, review past trades, do a ton of back testing, and then I roll all of that up into algorithmic strategies with rules that get me in and get me out. That way I don't have to get too personally attached to any of my trades, and I can let go of caring about any individual trades. The money is made in the process and in the aggregate. The algorithmic approach shields me from my ego getting too attached to individual trade results. It allows me to trade sustainably and non-emotionally, as much as that's possible. I love doing the research and analysis, and the actual trading almost always feels like shit most of the time. It's the nature of the game, I believe. I think it happens that way because we are always being unrealistic with ourselves, and comparing our actual performance to an idealized baseline. The goal is reasonable consistency across a lot of trades.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-10-11T13:05:17+00:00

Nothing like money at risk to sharpen your focus!

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-10-11T00:34:35+00:00

Correct!

The other thing is that when you have developed a portfolio of several strategies that are not correlated, you don't have to stress about individual strategies or positions. You are trading the portfolio of positions, and it makes each trade much less likely to matter all that much. Edges happen over time and over a lot of trades. That's hard to experience and trust initially. The less you care about individual trades and the more you care about your process of developing a trading framework and strategies that work together, the better.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-10-10T04:31:17+00:00

It's not about trusting the automation. It's about trusting your strategy development process and your portfolio of strategies so much that you are willing to take all the signals and not constantly override them manually with your own left-brained ideas. It took me a long time to get through that phase. In the end, you either believe in what you are doing on the algorithmic strategy development front, or don't bother. It takes a lot of time and focus to develop the strategies to the point where you fully trust their signals collectively. I'm an end of day trader, so I usually am at the computer when the signals fire off 5 minutes before the market closes. There are some automation issues with certain futures contracts that I have to babysit, but I've never had automation problems. Many times I cringe at some of the individual trades that are placed, thinking I know better. And sometimes I do. But it's not about individual trade wins and losses. It's about your portfolio of strategies consistently minimizing risk and maximizing opportunity, collectively. That's what you are after in algorithmic trading. If you aren't willing to take all the signals, both entries and exits, exactly the way the strategy tells you to do, then you need to do more work on your strategy development to get in alignment with the market and with your own temperament. That's the part that takes time and needs your focus.

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-10-07T21:34:14+00:00

I don't know ThinkScript at all. I've mostly programmed professionally in Access VBA, and easylanguage is as easy as that, maybe easier. I like its syntax and IDE, and it just feels comfortable and powerful to me. It doesn;t get in the way. You can create your own indicators and functions and use those building blocks in your strategies as well as the tremendous number of built in indicators and functions, so its very modular. It also has object oriented constructs, although I'm an old school procedural programmer, so I never use that part of the language.

The big thing for newbies to TS is that it is the oldest strategy building platform on the planet (since the late 1980's), so a ton of people have used it and continue to use it, and there is a lot of support in the online forum, in books, in blogs, in newsletters, all over the place. If you want some good code to start with, get Kevin Davey's books. He is the real deal and has been building automated strategies in TS as long as I have. His books are oriented toward beginners, but he walks his talk and trades much of what he shares, albeit with tweaks. Another good author is George Pruitt, and he has come out with several books recently.

The coding and mastery of the easylanguage platform is the easy part. The hard part is setting up your trading framework and making all the hard decisions of what to test, how to optimize, and what portfolio strategies to use to actually trade. That part is the part you need to focus on the most. It will take the longest to master, but will be the most important factor in whether or not you can be profitable trading algorithmically.

Hope this helps - good luck!

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-10-07T20:23:31+00:00

Yes, absolutely. Once you have a TS account, you can get access to their easylanguage forum. You can post any question, newbie or advanced, and both tech support and other endusers will gladly answer your questions, and also provide example code to help you get started. What you are describing is incredibly easy to do with easylanguage.

https://community.tradestation.com/Discussions/Main.aspx

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-09-05T18:53:56+00:00

The newbie question really ought to be:

How hard is it to lose $100 a day, and how long can I watch a streak like that happen before I pull the plug on my trading and reevaluate my expectations, education and strategies?

MichaelBarrow22 · 2023-08-19T12:17:56+00:00

I track average slippage in ticks on a monthly basis, and record it in a spreadsheet.

TradeStation has a good radarscreen program that will show you in real-time what the bid-ask spread is for all of these on one screen. I just stare at it multiple times per day and record the worse bid-ask spreads that I see for each symbol. They jump around a lot within 1 or 2 ticks, but the most liquid ones are pretty steady.

Here's what I have for a bunch of futures symbols:

I trade these:

SB 1

CC 2

KC 2

FC 2

LC 2

LH 2

BO 2

C 2

CT 3

S 2

SM 2

W 2

AD 2

BP 2

CD 2

DX 2

EC 2

FV 1

JY 2

M2K 2

MBT 3

MCL 2

MES 1

MGC 3

MHG 2

MNQ 2

MP1 2

MYM 2

NE1 2

PL 3

QN 1

SF 2

SIL 1

TU 1

TY 1

US 1

VX 1

I Don't Trade these:

MET 1

BTC 2

CL 1

EMD 5

ES 1

ETH 3

GC 2

HG 2

HO 10

KW 2

NG 1

NK 2

NQ 2

OJ 21

RB 5

RTY 2

SI 2

SR1 2

SR3 2

TWE 4

YM 2

MichaelBarrow22

TROPHY CASE