Order Flow Indicator Showdown: TradingView vs Trader Dale

Hello everyone, it’s Dale here. I’m shooting this video because TradingView just launched its own order flow software. This is how it looks, and I would like to do a video where I compare this order flow software with another battle-tested order flow software, which is my custom-made order flow software for the NinjaTrader 8 platform. Because I don’t want this video to be biased towards my order flow software, in this comparison, I’m going to compare only the things that can be compared objectively. So, the criteria for the comparison will be ease of use, accuracy of the software, customization, and price.

Let’s open up the TradingView platform, and let me show you how their software works. This is the TradingView platform. This is a standard 30-minute candle chart, and what you need to do here is click this icon and select Volume Footprint. You need to zoom in a bit, and this is how you get it.

So, this brings us to the first criteria, which is ease of use. The TradingView platform is a cloud-based platform, which means you can open it in an internet browser, which is definitely a great thing. Also, as you can see, it was very easy to open up the order flow software. It can’t really get simpler than that. TradingView is doing a great job on this.

Let me now talk a bit about what you see here before you. Let’s, for example, talk about this last footprint. The left side, this one, is bid. This is where aggressive sellers show, and the right side is the ask. This is where aggressive buyers show. Between that, there is the candle, and below that, there are total volumes traded at bid and total volumes traded at ask. This is Delta, which is the difference between bid and ask—in other words, the difference between aggressive buyers and aggressive sellers. Below that, there is the total volume of this footprint, or in other words, the total volumes traded in this candle. The darker the color, the more volumes were traded. For example, in here, there’s a dark green color, which means heavy volumes were traded. Here, there’s a light color, which means weak volumes were traded at this price level.

Now, there are also those black nodes here. This highlights that the heaviest volumes in this particular footprint were traded there. As you can see, in every footprint, there is a black highlighted price level. In this case, it is this one. In this footprint, it is this one. This is called a high-volume node, and it shows the price level where the heaviest volumes within the footprint were traded. That’s basically it. That’s what our order flow shows. As you can see, it’s pretty easy to use. It has the most basic features every order flow software should have—nothing more, but at least it is simple.

Now, let’s talk a bit about accuracy. Accuracy is very important when it comes to trading with order flow because order flow is only for intraday trading, scalping, for fast in-and-out trades. For that, you need the most accurate data there is. Unfortunately, TradingView as a platform doesn’t use tick data. They only use one-minute data, and there is a huge difference between that. Tick data basically gives you volume data every time the price ticks. You can’t get more detailed than that, but TradingView doesn’t have that. Otherwise, the TradingView platform would be extremely slow. Their main aim is retail traders—new traders who need things simple and fast. TradingView only uses one-minute data, which is distorted, and that means that the volumes you see there are not true volumes. This is just an estimate of volumes, but it is not accurate. What they usually have correct is the place where the volumes were the heaviest. Usually, like 80 maybe 90% of cases, they are correct with that. But the volumes, those numbers here, they are just off. With TradingView order flow software, the precision ends with finding the heaviest volumes, sometimes also the zones where the heaviest volumes were traded, but that’s about it. That’s where the precision ends. For me as a trader, this is a huge disadvantage. Unfortunately, I don’t think that TradingView is going to change this because fundamentally, the whole platform is based on one-minute data, not on tick data. I don’t think that they’re going to change the whole platform. That’s for the accuracy.

Now, let’s talk about customization. I need to mention again that this is beta. Things can change, but right now, there’s not really too much to customize here. Let me right-click the chart and go to the settings, and let me show you. There are a couple of settings here, but just a few actually do anything. For example, these three just change how the candles look. Look at the candles. For example, this one deletes the wick, which makes the body hollow. This is not really anything that would be of any help. I wouldn’t really change this. ATR length—I have no clue what it does. I was playing with it, but ATR stands for Average True Range. I don’t know why it even is in order flow software. That’s weird. Anyway, this brings access to this setting. This one is actually useful because here, you can switch between bid and ask settings. They call it buy and sell, which is just not correct. It should be bid and ask because the ask is not always a buy, and the bid is not always a sell. But anyway, it’s probably not coded by a trader, so this is a funny mistake they have here. But anyway, you can switch between this and total, which shows total volumes within the footprint. This is actually handy. I also have that in my software, so that’s a good thing to have here. Also, it can show Delta in every cell, which means the difference between aggressive buyers and aggressive sellers. Then they also have the gradient background. That’s actually quite useful because it highlights zones where heavy volumes were traded. I have that in my order flow software as well. Then there are just some colors. Value area—that’s something that I don’t really think needs to be included in order flow software. It has its place in volume profile software, but in order flow software, I don’t really think so. The next thing highlights the point of control—that’s the high-volume node of each footprint. Those are the black highlights. That’s definitely a useful feature. The last useful thing here is the imbalance, which you can highlight. Do you see those green bars here? Imbalance is when you compare the bid and ask. You always compare diagonally, like this number with this number. If this number is 300% or more bigger than this number, then it gets highlighted. That’s, I think, the last useful thing here in these settings. As you can see, there’s not too much useful stuff you can adjust here. Apart from the colors and the stuff that is not really useful, we have only this, this, this, and also the gradient background. The rest is just colors and stuff that doesn’t need to be there. That’s for the customization.

The last thing to talk about here is the price. This is the TradingView pricing. To get the order flow software, you need to get the premium service, which is around $600 per year. This obviously doesn’t include only the order flow software but also a lot of other things. That’s for the TradingView order flow software.

Let’s now compare it to the order flow software that I developed for the NinjaTrader 8 platform. This is how my order flow software looks. The first thing I need to comment on is the platform this software runs on, NinjaTrader 8. You need to download the NinjaTrader 8 platform, which is free, so no costs are involved here. You need to download the order flow software. Those are two things you need to do. Another thing I should mention here is that NinjaTrader 8 is not cloud-based, so you actually need to install the platform on your computer. What you see before you is my trading workspace, but it doesn’t need to be that complex. Let me just show you how you can create a new chart. You go to the control center, go new, new chart. Let’s go for Euro futures, and here, let’s say you want a 5-minute footprint chart. Press OK, zoom it in, and this is it. This is the default setting you’re going to get. You can also switch it from this look to a different look, like this one. This one shows candles with bid and ask on the left and on the right side, but I prefer the previous look because it shows the colors. Let me change it back to this one because this one uses gradient colors, so the heavy volumes stand out more. For example, here, you can see it better—heavy volume zone in here, heavy volumes in here compared to, for example, these low volume zones.

Anyways, if we talk about ease of use, I would say that my software is a little bit more complicated to get running. On the other hand, if you get my order flow software, you’ll also get tech support, which means that our tech support team will connect to your computer and set everything up for you. You don’t really need to download the platform or the indicators. They will also load up my workspace, so you don’t really need to do anything. But yeah, TradingView wins this fight because their order flow software and TradingView platform are extremely user-friendly.

The next thing we are comparing is accuracy. NinjaTrader 8, where my order flow software runs, works with tick data. That’s the most precise data you can have, and that’s why my order flow software shows exactly the data that every trader sees on the whole planet. So all the banks, all the funds, all the big traders, all the institutions, they all see the same data as I do. The data is not distorted; it is 100% accurate, which in my opinion.

is extremely important when you are day trading with order flow. I think that’s all I need to say about accuracy.

Let’s talk about the next point, which is customization. As you can see on your screen now, you can customize pretty much everything. Just to show you what I have here with my workspace: this chart on the left is a 30-minute chart where I have total volumes. Each footprint shows total volumes. You can very nicely see the zones where heavy volumes were traded, like this one, this one, this one. The software also highlights the high-volume nodes in those black brackets. Also, those yellow ones—this is where multiple high-volume nodes are. Those are very important places. My software highlights those as well by default. On the left, there’s volume profile, which shows the volume distribution throughout the whole day. In other words, it is giving me the bigger picture, which is, by the way, very important when trading with order flow. That’s this big-picture chart. Then, this one is a 5-minute chart, which shows the bid and ask. Below that, there’s Delta—that’s the difference between aggressive buyers and aggressive sellers. This is a more detailed chart, which I use for trade entry confirmations. It also prints unfinished business, which are those green and red lines. For example, here, this is unfinished business, and price likes to test zones like that.

On the next chart, this is something that TradingView will probably never have. It is a filtered chart, and I’m saying that they’ll never have it because you need tick data to get that correct. What this chart does is filter out all the noise from the market, all the small orders, and it only shows the big ones, the big ones placed by big traders, and big trading institutions. This is a very useful thing. Another very useful thing here is this cumulative delta chart, which is another thing that TradingView will most likely never have because you need tick data for that. This one shows the price, and below that, cumulative Delta. Here, I look for divergences because in most cases, the price moves the same way as the cumulative Delta does. By the way, the cumulative Delta is the difference between aggressive buyers and aggressive sellers over time. But if there is a divergence, like for example, the price going up and Delta going down, then the price tends to follow Delta. This is a very useful and very easy-to-use indicator, which is also part of my order flow pack.

Alright, so as you can see, it is very customizable. The reason is that NinjaTrader 8 is very coder-friendly, which means that coders can create almost anything they can think of here on this platform. There are really no restrictions, and that’s also the reason you can adjust almost everything with my order flow indicator.

Now, let’s talk about price. Let me go to my website, which is TraderDale.com. If you click this button, Trading Course and Tools, then it will take you to this page. You scroll down a bit, and this is the order flow pack. The order flow pack includes order flow software—that’s the one you saw. It is a lifetime license for multiple computers. It also includes a 12-hour-long video course on order flow trading and my custom-made volume profile indicators. This is the price.

So, this brings us to this comparison table where I rank the ease of use, accuracy, customization, and price. As for ease of use, TradingView does a great job on this. You just open the platform in a browser with just a couple of clicks, and you are all set to go. Regarding my indicator, you first need to install the NinjaTrader 8 platform, which is free, but you need to install it. You can’t open it in a browser, and you also need to download the indicator. So, it is more complicated—nothing too terrible, especially if you let our team do all the work for you. But as far as ease of use goes, TradingView simply wins because you can’t really get simpler than their cloud-based platform.

Now, as far as accuracy goes, TradingView doesn’t have tick data, which in my opinion is crucial for order flow trading, which is all about precision. My software, on the other hand, does use tick data, and therefore it is more accurate.

As far as customization goes, keep in mind that TradingView is only beta—things could change, but not too much, I think. Right now, they don’t really offer too much customization. I think the reason is that their software was not coded by a trader, but just by a coder who didn’t know what traders need. Also, TradingView is not very easy to code in, and there are some obstacles for coders, so maybe the lack of customization is a result of those limitations. On the other hand, my order flow has many unique features which you can use and tailor them exactly to your needs, as you saw previously in this video. The reason is that NinjaTrader 8, where my order flow runs, is very coder-friendly. Coders can program anything they can think of there.

Now, the last point is price, and here we need to keep in mind that we are not comparing identical products. The TradingView price includes the platform and other indicators as well. My order flow pack, apart from the order flow indicator, also includes a 12-hour order flow trading course, custom-made volume profile indicators, and free tech support that sets everything up for you. By the way, there are no costs regarding the NinjaTrader 8 platform where I run my software, so keep that in mind. Those are the specifics of the products that we are comparing. The TradingView price is currently around $600 per year. My price is currently a little bit below $500 for a lifetime.

To give you a little conclusion of this comparison video, I think it is really great that TradingView finally made their own order flow software, as TradingView is an extremely popular platform and many traders wanted to have order flow there. But the limitations the TradingView platform has are, in my opinion, too big an obstacle to creating a professional order flow tool. The biggest obstacle, in my opinion, is the lack of tick data. Without it, the order flow lacks precision and its purpose. But if you have never used order flow and if you do have a TradingView subscription, then I recommend checking their order flow out. Test it, play with it, watch what it does. But if you are serious about trading and want a professional tool, not just a toy, then I would recommend different software, for example, the Trader Dale order flow, which I just showed you. If you want it, just go to my website, www.TraderDale.com, and you can get it here. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at contact@traderdale.com, or there’s also a quick chat on the website, so you can use that as well.

So, that’s it for the video. I hope you guys liked it. I hope you found it useful. Let me know what you think about the TradingView software—if you used it, if you like it, or if you prefer something different. Let me know in the comment section. I’ll be looking forward to reading what you have to say, and I’ll also be looking forward to seeing you next time in another video or in our members’ area. Until then, happy trading!