Price Alerts - Awesomely Useful or Just Rubbish?

[TheNegotiator 13]

I've always thought I should probably try to utilize my charting platform's capability more than I currently do. I'm currently on IRT but have used others in the past too. IRT really does seem to have a fantastic level of flexibility. One thing which I have always thought about doing is using alerts. Now I'm not sure that it's entirely necessary although I think with some creativity it could be pretty useful. If we're looking at multiple markets for example, having volume and price alerts to only draw attention to anything making big moves could be useful right? I guess a lot of the time it will be that all markets will be moving more but like over the last few days in crude for example, did everyone spot it was making some decent moves lower? My guess is not. Then what about highly correlated markets like the e-minis? If you are into profiling and use concepts such as initial balance, are you aware of how all of them are behaving at once or could some sort of alert be useful for keeping a gauge on the broader feel of the markets?

 

I suppose the overall value of any alert is proportional to the methodology and the quality of its design.

 

Anyway, if you use alerts then I'd certainly like to hear how you do so, especially if you do so creatively.

[Mysticforex 13]

I have used price alerts in the past with forex. Usually when price is approaching my TP.

It's very aggravating when price gets to within pips of my TP only to do a reversal.

 

Sometimes I use them to alert me to a pair reaching a key level. Not to signal a trade, but so I can monitor it's behavior at this level.

 

The alerts I use are provided free by one of my brokers and sent via SMS. I have found them to be very reliable.

[TheNegotiator 13]

I can definitely see how price alerts would be useful if you were to trade multiple products such as a trader might if they trade fx. Then those who trade many different individual stocks rather than focusing on just a few, I'm certain must find alerts very useful.

[SIUYA 11]

Basically - alerts to then sit and watch and wait kind of defeat the purpose - better to have something that triggers a response to actually do something...oh - thats called auto trading.

(I have never had an affinity with alerts from a system)

 

If trading multiple instruments alerts are great, but they should be simple - a flashing colour, a dialog box, a change of colour. (I used to hook up excel with conditional colour changes and watch alerts fire off and on....one issue became one of correlation - everything fired at once - which fish do you target....)

 

Having either a continual beeping is annoying, have a single beep might be missed, so sound alerts i found painful.

There is also the issue of how many alerts do you want - too many and they get ignored, too few and if you wonder if they are necessary. You might be better having a voice alert - "hi Jon....its Marcia here, just to let you know the chickens cooking and by the way the 200day MA for the AUDUSD has crossed, you might want to open the wine and exit the short" or something like a continual mantra such as "stay short stay short, stay short" changing to "get long, get long get long"

 

I dont use alerts as such mainly as they are more trouble than they are worth to maintain on many systems. Rather if trading multiple instruments the preparation is the alert, and if trading a few instruments, watching is the better option.

Why is it easy to trade with a click but so hard to modify, set and delete alerts.????

 

Plus - while I know a lot of people constantly checking their bb, ihones etc for their prices - I dont know many who trade off those alerts. It is usually to tell them either "s...t my stop has been hit," "my tp has been hit" or i really should be at my desk rather than being distracted having a beer here with you. But it helps them feel in touch i guess.

 

The best alert is your PL....

[TheNegotiator 13]

Yeah this has been my overall view for a while, but still I wonder what could be done. I know IRT is quite powerful in what it can do and I think Sierra (which I believe you use) is too.

 

On the audible alerts - there used to be a guy in my office who had just one. "New high oil" it chirped. This wouldn't have been such a bad thing considering oil was a big market driver at the time, but it was fairly poorly configured imo. It went off every few seconds when oil was rallying and frankly this just became a bit of a distraction. Still, he liked it.

[SIUYA 11]

SC has a good system of alerts, and there are multiple ways of configuring them.

I wish they would all be configureable via a spreadsheet, and that you could easily click on the chart for a one stop spot to place the alert into the spreadsheet.

Rather than - look at chart, type in alert, etc, etc.

I am sure other system might have it, but then it does not have the parts of SC I like.

Some smart cookie might have worked out how to do it on SC - it is very flexible....but I have ignored many alerts systems because of my stated reasons in the meantime.

 

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the "new high oil" would be extremely irritating if you were sitting next to them and short oil