My Swing Trading Routine on TradingView: Scanning the Watchlist Dashboard

This is my swing trading routine on TradingView. It comes in two parts: a deeper analysis once a week, on Sunday, and two short checks on each trading day. It uses the watchlist dashboard and the PipTrend indicators from this series. This is how I work, not advice, so take what fits your own plan.

On Sunday, I go top-down with PipTrend V2.0. I start on the weekly chart, then the daily, the 4-hour, and finally the 1-hour. The multi timeframe panel shows the trend on every timeframe at once, so I can quickly see where they agree.

Then I check the dollar index, DXY, for a quick read on the dollar. I also look at the week’s events and the macro data, with a macro screener as an extra layer of confluence.

Last, I flag the pairs I may trade this week in cyan. Red flags are my trades: the open ones, and the ones closed this week. With just these two colours, the watchlist becomes my dashboard for the week.

Why a dashboard? Because related pairs tend to move together. The euro and pound pairs often move alike. So do the Aussie and Kiwi pairs, and the Canadian and US dollar pairs. And the franc pairs and the yen pairs usually move as a group.

Here’s an example. When EURNZD is strongly bearish, EURAUD is most likely bearish too, because the Aussie and the Kiwi move together. Here, CADJPY and USDJPY are both bullish, because the Canadian and the US dollar move together. It works the same way in either direction.

This helps in two ways. First, you can see which currency is moving today: when all the pairs of one currency move the same way, it’s that currency doing the moving. Our free currency strength meter shows this at a glance too. Second, if you missed a setup on one pair, a very similar one may still form on a related pair. Just remember that these relationships can change, so always check the chart instead of assuming.

Related pairs also matter for your risk. Say you trade a prop firm account that lets you risk 1 percent per trade, and allows trades on related pairs. If you take the same idea on two related pairs, with 1 percent on each, you’re really risking 2 percent on one idea. When you’re right, you make double. But when you’re wrong, both trades usually lose together, so you lose double too. It’s a double-edged sword, so check your firm’s rules, and size it with care.

On trading days, I check the charts twice: once before the London open, and once during the London and New York overlap, in the New York morning. Each check takes about five minutes.

I go through the cyan pairs on the 1-hour chart, with PipTrend Swing and V2.0. I look at the side, the zones, the day map, and whether an idea is forming.

Then a quick look at the red flags, my open positions. Most of the time, I hold a trade until it hits the target or the stop. But if price chops around my entry for days, and the lower timeframes start pointing against me, I may close it near break-even. And if price struggles to reach the target, I’m happy to take the profit once it has made more than one and a half times the risk. Managing a trade is about losing a little less when you’re wrong, and winning more when you’re right. When a trade closes, I keep its red flag until Sunday. In my weekly analysis, I go back through those trades and take the lessons from them. A trading journal helps too: it collects data on what works for you and what doesn’t.

If a setup is forming, I either wait for it, or set an alert, for example Swing: any idea, so I don’t have to watch the chart. If nothing is forming, I close TradingView until the next check. Stepping away from the chart and doing something else helps me avoid overtrading, which is one of the most common ways traders lose money.

That’s the whole routine: one deeper analysis a week, and two short checks a day. It’s a process, not a promise of results, and your own checklist decides every trade.

For the best results, review your trades, backtest and forward test, and over time, build your own routine and strategy that fit your lifestyle and trading style. Mine is just one of many ways to trade. A routine you build for yourself will fit you better than anyone else’s. Every guide in this series is linked below.