TradingView Still Supported?

Alpaca Products Discussion
1

Is the TradingView integration actually being actively supported? I feel like I must be the only one attempting to use it, because it is missing some critical pieces of TradingView support, and has some bizarre (and maddening) feature choices where there is support.

If there is an active development team, and they’re interested in some pointed but constructive feedback on TradingView integration, I’m happy to provide specific and graphic details. If, OTOH, the software is in maintenance mode and nobody is actually working on it, I’ll move on to greener pastures.

2

@TraderJess Definitely TradingView integration is actively supported. Do note the integration is actually supported by TradingView. Alpaca works very closely with their developers, but they support their UI and website.

What specific issues are you seeing?

3

The first and most maddening thing is that I can’t attach brackets (take profit and stop loss) to an existing position. This is especially relevant if I got into the position via a market order, and want to add TP and SL visually with the standard TradingView handles on the existing position.

The second issue is that, if I do have TP and SL secondary orders attached to a primary order in advance, and the primary order fills, those secondary orders suddenly gain their own TP and SL handles, which makes no sense. What is the scenario where I would want to attach a take profit order to a take profit order? Or a stop loss on a stop loss order? Or, more confusingly, a take profit order to a stop loss order? It’s just nonsensical.

The third major issue is that the take profit and stop loss secondary orders, once they are live because the primary order filled, no longer show the $ amount of profit / loss – or ticks, or % profit loss, depending on what is set in Trading Settings. Sure, I could try and multiply the share price by the order quantity in my head, but that’s just additional cognitive load that I don’t need to be distracted by.

The fourth major issue is that I get a concurrent connection warning on every new tab. I might be looking at 5-8 stocks every day, flipping between tabs and potentially setting up orders in each of them. Having to dismiss the concurrent connection warning each time is quite annoying, and probably unnecessary if each of those tabs is a different symbol. Yes, I get that the tabs could conflict – but this seems highly unlikely for different symbols.

I would also like to see some P&L information to see how I am doing for the day, or for a given security. As far as I can tell, I can’t even see the P&L on a given trade – just the fill price. This seems like a glaring oversight.

All of these issues, added together, strongly suggest to me that nobody is seriously trying to use Alpaca as a broker on TradingView. But hey, maybe I’m just wrong and people have a higher tolerance for pain than I do.

4

Should I be directing this feedback to TradingView instead?

5

@TraderJess All well thought out and very good suggestions. Those would best be directed to TradingView. All of that seems doable through the API’s with a suitable front end. Alpaca simply provides the API’s to place orders and check account information. Do appreciate there are often details which make implementation complex. TradingView integrates with a number of different brokers and each one has slightly different API’s. That certainly creates a lot of complexity.

6

Understood. As a retired software engineer, I can certainly appreciate the ironic complexity of providing a simple and intuitive user interface. :slightly_smiling_face:

I will redirect to TradingView and see if they are receptive to feedback.

Thanks much for the response.

7

Well, I went back and forth with TradingView support. They gave me a bunch of lame excuses about how they cannot provide features that Alpaca themselves does not support on the Alpaca website. I pointed out that Alpaca was primarily an API-based brokerage, but I think they had already made up their minds that they’d rather do nothing, even the things that are clearly TradingView integration flaws.

I’m ultimately not interested in being a go-between for Alpaca and TradingView. Alpaca has been a decent broker, and I have no qualms about the service I’ve received so far, but Alpaca simply is not usable via TradingView.

If Alpaca wants the TradingView traffic, I think it will be up to Alpaca to reach out to TradingView to make that happen. It’s not going to happen otherwise. And TradingView + Alpaca could be a really potent combination, too.

As for me, I’m throwing in the towel. I’ve pulled my money out (again, no specific complaint with Alpaca directly) and am moving on to other platforms.