Connecting Indicators
You have the indicator on the chart. Now Strategy Lab has to be told to read it.
It is two clicks and it holds for that chart until you change it. The tester starts taking its entries from your indicator, and the rest of your settings carry on untouched.
Step by step
Add the indicator to the chart
Open the Indicators dialog, go to My scripts, and click the one you want. It lands on the chart in a pane of its own under the price.
Find it in the legend
Its name sits at the top left of that pane with its current values beside it. Rest the cursor on the row and a small set of icons appears. The cog is the one that opens its settings.
Set it up the way you want
Everything the indicator offers is on the Inputs tab. Change what you want, leave the rest alone, and press Ok. You can come back and change it again at any point.
Switch Strategy Lab to External Indicators
Open Strategy Lab’s own settings and find Global Indicator Source near the top. Set Signal Mode to External Indicators.
This one is not optional. Left on RSI, nothing you do in the next step has any effect, because the tester keeps using its own built in indicator and never looks at yours.
Point the signals at it
Underneath are the fields that decide where each signal comes from: the base order, the safety orders, the last safety order and the exits. Open whichever one you want your indicator to drive, and scroll past the price options at the top. Your indicator’s plots are listed below them.
The one to choose is the one with the arrow beside it that says Signal. The others are lines the indicator happens to draw, and the tester can read them, but the arrow is the plot the indicator publishes its actual signal on.
Each field is set on its own, so Long BO and Long SO can take their signals from two different indicators if that is what you want. Every entry does need one, though. With Signal Mode on External Indicators, an entry left without a signal connected will stop the tester running properly.
The part most people miss
Worth knowingYou can add the same indicator to the chart more than once, and TradingView keeps each copy separate, with its own settings and its own plots in that dropdown. Three copies of the RSI, each set differently, can drive three different parts of the same deal: one opening the base order, one placing the safety orders, one closing the position.
They do not have to be the same indicator either. With forty to draw from and every signal field choosing its own, the number of combinations is past counting. It is also where two people with the same forty indicators end up with strategies that behave nothing alike.
Watching it work
Every change lands straight away. The trades redraw on the chart as you adjust things, and the numbers in the info panel move with them, so you can see what a different signal did without leaving the chart.