Updated October 2026. This series originally ended with plans to trade the strategy live and publish every trade. I no longer run live trading or signal services, so the series now focuses on what you can do yourself: build a strategy, test it, and decide whether to trust it.
TradingView is full of excellent indicators. Many are free, open source and loved by thousands of traders.
An indicator shows you something. A strategy turns it into rules you can test: when to enter, when to exit, and what happened every time those rules fired in the past.
With a little Pine Script, you can turn one into the other.
Why start from an indicator
- Indicators are a good foundation. Popular ones already capture a clear technical idea.
- Rules make ideas testable. A visual cue (“the line turned green”) becomes an exact entry and exit condition.
- You learn by doing. We’ll take one real indicator all the way through, not just talk about it.
What this series covers
- Converting an indicator into a TradingView strategy script
- Testing it across several markets and timeframes
- Adding filters to reduce false signals
- Testing whether the result is robust, or just fitted to the past
The example: HalfTrend by everget
For this series I chose HalfTrend, one of the most popular trend-following indicators on TradingView. It gives clean buy and sell signals, which makes it easy to turn into rules.
You can find it on TradingView by searching for “HalfTrend” by everget.
The series
- Part 1 (this article): choosing the indicator.
- Part 2: decoding the logic, building the strategy, testing it on five markets and optimising its filters.
- The Trader’s Mindset: the principles that come before any live trade.
- Part 3: the robustness tests a strategy should pass.
- The full backtest report: the optimised strategy’s results, and why they aren’t enough on their own.
Have an indicator you’d like to see converted next? Let me know.