Video summary

5 Useful Libraries for TradingView

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Key takeaways

Technology

Overview

The video titled “5 Useful Libraries for TradingView” explains several open-source Pine Script libraries you can import into TradingView scripts to gain extra built-in functions. These libraries mainly improve coding “quality of life” and support more advanced analysis features.

Core idea: how to use TradingView libraries

  • Use the Pine Script import keyword with a TradingView username to access libraries.
  • Autocomplete helps you find libraries published by that username.
  • You can set an alias (example: as zen) so functions are called like: zen.<function>().

1) The creator’s own Pine Script library (example library)

This library demonstrates typical library capabilities and organizes utilities into several categories.

Quality-of-life / coding helpers

  • Quote price precision utilities
    • Get/trim/convert decimal precision for the current symbol.
  • Numeric conversion helpers for alerts/integration systems:
    • Convert to whole numbers
    • Convert pips ↔ whole numbers, points ↔ whole numbers
    • Motivated by crypto symbols that sometimes have many decimals.

Market structure / analysis helpers

  • Bars above a moving average
    • Count how many bars have closed above a chosen MA over a lookback period.
  • Candlestick detection functions
    • Hammer, shooting star, engulfing candles, etc.

Backtesting filters

  • Date/day filters to restrict strategy execution to specific time ranges.
    • Enables walk-forward analysis / backtests within a chosen date window.

2) Official TradingView strategy library (Developer profile)

Key functions highlighted:

Position sizing

  • Calculate position size by stop-loss percent or stop-loss ticks.
    • Inputs include stop-loss value, risk percentage, and entry price.
  • Notes on currency/accounting complexity:
    • Should work well for stocks/CFDs
    • Forex/crypto may be more complicated due to exchange-rate conversions.

Intraday trade management

  • Close all at end of session (and a “sister” function with similar behavior).
    • Closes positions on the close of the last bar in the trading session.
    • Useful for day/intraday traders to avoid overnight gaps/weekend holds.

Performance stats over time

  • Sharpe ratio and Sortino ratio
    • Can reference the strategy’s Sharpe/Sortino values bar-by-bar, updating as the backtest progresses.
    • This supports plotting/labeling these metrics as they evolve, rather than only viewing final results in the Strategy Tester.

3) TradingView ta library (technical analysis) — version mentioned as v7

Purpose

  • Provides technical analysis functions not built into Pine by default (as claimed by the speaker).

Highlights

  • CAGR (compound annual growth rate) between two points in time (useful for backtesting).
  • All-time high/low helpers
    • Computes all-time high/low from the first historical bar to the current bar (described as not looking forward).
    • Contrasted with functions that might “look forward” on historical bars.
  • Examples of advanced indicators:
    • Double exponential moving average (DEMA) via ema2 style function usage.
    • Ichimoku
      • Returns a tuple of Ichimoku components (speaker mentions a tuple / TL notion).
      • Emphasized because there may be no equivalent built-in ta.ichimoku-style function otherwise.
    • Mentions many additional functions, with some unfamiliar to the speaker.

4) PineCoders libraries (semi-official community)

PineCoders is described as a major Pine community whose contributions often become adopted or supported by TradingView developers.

Visible Chart library

  • Provides functions that compute values based on only the visible bars currently shown on the chart.
  • Example: visible-prefixed functions (e.g., visible VWAP and visible volume-weighted values).

Tutorial/demonstration concept

  • Modify a strategy to use a visible filter so buys only occur when the current bar is within the chart viewport.
  • Strategy Tester behavior:
    • With the visible-only filter enabled, the test executes only trades whose entry occurs within the visible chart range.
    • The sell logic may still trigger after leaving the visible region (entry is constrained).

Use cases mentioned

  • Walk-forward / time-window analysis
    • Zoom to a period (e.g., mid-2006 to 2010) and evaluate results for that window.
    • Example: checking performance during the 2008 financial crisis, showing it wasn’t affected much due to a long-term moving average “market regime” filter.
  • Debugging
    • Helps inspect what the script is doing within a specific chart section.

5) PineCoders time library

Purpose

  • A quality-of-life utility library for converting and formatting timestamps into simple text strings.

Why it’s useful

  • For displaying information to users (especially if publishing scripts publicly).
  • For debugging and presenting time-related data cleanly.

Main speakers / sources

  • Speaker: The YouTube presenter (TradingView/trader channel host; name not provided in subtitles).
  • Library sources mentioned:
    • Official TradingView Developer Profile (for the strategy library)
    • TradingView ta library
    • PineCoders (Visible Chart and Time libraries)
    • The speaker’s own library (used as the initial import example)

Original video