Alerts

An alert lets you leave the chart without missing the moment your plan needs you. When one arrives late or not at all, the cost is concrete: you skip the trade, or you enter at a worse price with the same stop.

The three parts of every alert

Every alert has three parts. The condition is what must happen, for example price crossing a level. The trigger frequency is how often it may fire: once, or every time the condition is met. The delivery is how it reaches you: pop-up, sound, phone push, email, or a webhook, which sends the message to a web address so another program can read it, such as a trade journal or a bot.

The alert itself never trades, but a bot connected to a webhook can, so test it on a demo account first.

Alert or pending order: which to use

A pending order is an instruction to enter automatically at a price you chose in advance. An alert needs you to act; a pending order does not.

Use this rule: if the entry needs your judgment (how the candle closes, what the news is), set an alert. If it needs no judgment and you may not be free to act within a few minutes, place a pending order with a stop loss instead.

The three alert types and what each one watches

The mid-candle fire is the most common misread. While a candle is still forming, price can poke through your level and pull back before the close. The alert fires on a move that leaves only a wick. You get the alert, open the chart, and see a candle that closed on the wrong side of your level. On a 1-hour or 4-hour chart, set the alert to fire once per candle close so you act on a finished candle. The candles below show one bar whose high reaches 1.0962, 12 pips above the alert line at 1.0950. That fires the alert, but the bar closes at 1.0944, back under the line. Indicator alerts misfire the same way when a line cross forms mid-candle and is gone by the close.

A price alert that fires mid-candle on a wick through the alert lineIllustration

What a late alert costs: a 30-pip stop that becomes 45

The figures here are an illustrative example. You plan to buy EUR/USD on a break above 1.1000, with a stop at 1.0970 and a target at 1.1060. You trade 0.10 lot (10,000 units), so one pip is worth $1.

Entered on time at 1.1000, you risk 30 pips to make 60. If you only notice the move at 1.1015, the stop and target have not moved, so you now risk 45 pips to make 45.

Reward-to-risk for an on-time entry at 1.1000 versus a late entry at 1.1015

Risk, on-time entry30 × $1= $30

Reward, on-time entry60 × $1= $60

Reward-to-risk, on time$60 ÷ $30= 2

Risk, late entry45 × $1= $45

Reward, late entry45 × $1= $45

Reward-to-risk, late$45 ÷ $45= 1

Cost of entering 15 pips lateReward-to-risk falls from 2 to 1

A rule you can copy: if price is already more than a third of your stop distance past the entry when you see the alert, skip the trade or wait for a pullback to the level. Here a third of the 30-pip stop is 10 pips, so the cut-off is 1.1010. At 1.1015 you are 15 pips past the entry, so you skip.

The fix is to set the alert before the entry level, not on it. In this example an alert at 1.0990 fires 10 pips early, which gives you time to open the platform and prepare the order. The chart below shows the early alert firing before price reaches the planned entry, and where the late entry would have been.

Early price alert at 1.0990 firing before the planned entry at 1.1000Illustration

Where you create and manage alerts on your trading platform

Most platforms let you right-click (or press and hold on a phone) the price on the chart to create an alert at that level. There is also a separate alerts list, where you can edit, pause or delete each one.

The setup window asks for the symbol, the condition, the value, the trigger frequency, the expiry and the delivery method. For indicator alerts, the same window holds the choice between firing on every price change and firing at the candle close.

Some platforms give an alert an expiry date, after which it stops working; check whether yours does. An open-ended alert has no expiry: it stays active until it fires or you delete it. That suits a level that may take weeks to be reached, but old open-ended alerts pile up and fire on plans you have already dropped.

Check where the alert is stored. An alert saved inside a desktop program only works while that program is open and connected. An alert saved on the provider's servers still fires when your computer is off.

Desktop-stored alert vs server-stored alert over one day, with price reaching the level while the computer is off

Checks before you rely on an alert

• Send yourself a test alert. Confirm it reaches your phone with sound, including in silent or battery-saving mode.
• Write the plan in the alert message: direction, entry, stop, target. You should not need to remember why you set it.
• Check the expiry date, if your platform sets one, against how long the setup could take.
• Delete alerts for levels you no longer trade. Too many alerts teach you to ignore them.

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