Trendspider Review – Is Automated Technical Analysis Effective?

What is TrendSpider?

TrendSpider is an automated technical analysis platform that uses machine learning to detect price trends and chart patterns. It’s a breakthrough trading software for day and swing traders who want an automated, intelligent chart analysis program that actually gets the patterns right. While there are other automated technical analysis solutions on the market, few are as accurate or as seamless as TrendSpider.

So, is this charting software worth paying for? Keep reading our TrendSpider review to find out.

TrendSpider Pricing

TrendSpider offers three pricing options.

The Essential Plan costs $39 per month when purchased as a monthly subscription or $32 per month when prepaid annually. It limits you to two simultaneous workspaces, 25 active alerts, and backtesting to 3,000 candles.

The Elite Plan costs $79 per month when purchased as a monthly subscription or $65 per month when prepaid annually. In addition to more workspaces, alerts, and backtesting data, you get access to TrendSpider’s alternative data. This includes unusual option flow data, dark pool trades, social media monitoring, and more. You can also trade automatically with bots.

The Elite Plus Plan costs $179 per month when purchased as a monthly subscription and $135 permonth when prepaid annually. This plan is nearly identical to the Elite plan, but offers higher limits on many of the features like alerts, workspaces, and scan results. The Elite Plus Plan plan seems like a good option if you find that you are hitting limits with the Elite plan.

All plans include real-time data for NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies(over 100 pairs). You also get unlimited access to TrendSpider’s trend detection tools, multi-timeframe analysis, indicators, trendlines, and look-ups.

TrendSpider offers seven-day free trial period on all subscriptions. After the trial, TrendSpider pricing is as follows:

TrendSpider Video Review

TrendSpider Platform

Let’s dive into our TrendSpider review by discussing the platform itself. TrendSpider is a web-based charting software packed with some unique features. At its core, it is a well-crafted charting solution with real-time stock charts and historical data. The platform’s unique offering is its high-quality automated technical analysis software. The automated analysis features are great for technical analysts who want to get an automated perspective on their charts.

The platform is relatively easy to use and runs smoothly. During our tests, the platform was fast and didn’t experience any lagging.

TrendSpider can be used to analyze stocks, currencies, futures, and cryptocurrencies.

TrendSpider Features

These are our favorite features of this impressive platform.

Charts

TrendSpider offers candlestick charts, hollow candles, and bar charts. We prefer the candlesticks, but all of the charts are visually appealing and offer a wide range of indicators. Honestly, the charts alone make this platform worth the price. Traders have access to real-time charts and all of the technical indicators you could need. You can choose between dark and light layouts, plus customize the charts to your preferences.

TrendSpider could hold its own as a charting platform for traders, but there are plenty of other unique features that make the platform stand out.

Trendlines

The star of the TrendSpider platform is “automated charting analysis.” Automated trendline analysis is one of the major components of this feature.

Enter any ticker into the chart, choose a timeframe and TrendSpider will show you all of the relevant trendlines. It’s very interesting how the algorithm finds different trend lines ranging from basic highs and lows to fractals with cross-directional peaks and valleys. The automated trendline detection can be helpful for finding support and resistance lines, as well as potential reversal points for stocks.

You can customize the trendline settings to suit your needs. Here are the main analysis types:

Original – This uses the original algorithm the company developed

Enhanced – This uses the improved algorithm the company developed

Experimental – This uses some of the new features the company is testing out

You can customize the trendlines even further by tweaking the advanced settings. Make sure to spend some time playing around with the settings if you want to get the most use out of the platform.

TrendSpider claims to find every single possible trendline on a chart. While there’s no way to know for sure if this is true, we certainly couldn’t find any obvious trendlines that it missed in our testing.

Conviction Setting

The conviction setting is a filter that enables users to choose between High, Med, Low and None. High conviction filters down to the strongest and most effective trendlines on a chart. Medium and Low settings will add more secondary and alternate trendlines. Setting it to None will show every single trendline TrendSpider detects on the chart.

More advanced traders may want to see the hidden and secondary trendlines for their analysis. Newbies will want to stick with the High conviction setting to keep things simple. It’s also just nice to be able to reduce the number of trendlines when you want a big-picture view of what’s happening on a chart.

Manual Trendline Tuning

Each trendline is color-coded based on the underlying formula used to identify it. The formulas can be modified and refined manually through the Manual Tuning mode. This is a boon to non-programmers since the machine learning algorithm learns with each piece of data and feedback.  You can also right-click on a trendline to remove it if you don’t believe it is helpful in your analysis.

Earlier this year, TrendSpider also added the functionality to create your own trendlines and set alerts for breaks of these lines.

Candlestick Recognition

TrendSpider’s automatic analysis can also recognize different candlestick patterns on a chart. You can choose from a long list of candlestick patterns, and the platform will automatically highlight these patterns on the chart. The candlestick pattern detection is a truly unique feature of this trading platform.

We found this to be particularly useful to see how certain stocks behaved relative to certain candlestick patterns. For example, if you want to see how a stock usually reacts the day after forming a hammer candle, you can highlight all of the hammers on the chart and analyze the historical data.

While the pattern recognition tool doesn’t account for lead-in trends, we found the actual pattern identification to be very accurate.

Automatic Fibonacci Retracements

This is one of the breakthrough features of TrendSpider. Fibonacci-based chartists will tell you the problem with plotting Fibonacci lines is determining where the high and low points should be. Those high/low price points are the crux that other harmonic and Elliott Wave patterns depends on.

Finding the correct highs and lows by hand is a trial and error process that can take a lot of time. TrendSpider’s smart algorithms automatically find the most relevant peak-to-trough levels to calculate and plot the most effective Fibonacci lines. We’ve doubled checked and found this automated trading platform to be very precise in finding critical inflection points.

Indicators and Multi-timeframe Analysis

You can add more than 40 indicators to your charts, including moving averages, Bollinger Bands, parabolic SAR, RSI, MACD and stochastics. You can also create alerts and triggers based on any of these indicators.

TrendSpider’s multi-timeframe analysis enables you to compare and overlay analysis in layers. It’s kind of like using an MRI compared to an x-ray exam. Multi-time frames provide the best market intelligence to enhance price action interpretation.

This is truly one of the most powerful and convenient features of the platform. The ability to plot tools from one chart timeframe onto another saves a lot of time you’d normally spend clicking between multiple charts. For example, you can plot a 200-week moving average on a daily chart, carry trendlines from one timeframe to another, and apply technical indicators across multiple timeframes.

Multi-timeframe analysis can be helpful for identifying support and resistance levels across different timeframes or finding potential inflection points for a stock. This tool can be particularly beneficial for active traders who want to understand how longer timeframe price levels may impact shorter timeframe charts (i.e. intraday). We’ve been looking for a tool like this in a trading software for a while and TrendSpider definitely delivered.

Watch Lists

Users can create an unlimited number of watch lists or automated smart watch lists. TrendSpider can instantly analyze stocks on in a list and scan them for potential patterns in real-time, providing dynamic price alerts and indicator-based triggers.

Alerts Reimagined

You can set price or indicator-based alerts directly on any stock chart. The alerts can be as specific as the number of times a stock price bounces off a trendline or at specific price levels and so forth. It is important to keep the alerts selective, so you aren’t constantly getting pinged with email or text alerts all day long.

Most platforms have alerting capabilities, but TrendSpider takes this feature to another level with two unique features.

1. You can set dynamic price alerts

Whereas static price alerts will alert you when a stock hits a certain price, dynamic alerts will alert you based on a stock’s price action relative to a dynamic price area. For example, you can set automated alerts for when a stock breaks below a specific trendline or is approaching it’s 200-day moving average.

2. You can define different alert triggers

Most alert systems follow binary criteria (i.e. alert when a stock hits $20). TrendSpider offers three different trigger types:

Break Through

Touch

Bounce

This allows you to take your alerts to the next level. For example, you could set an alert for a stock breaking through a trendline or using the trendline as support/resistance. The differentiation in these triggers can help traders use alerts more effectively.

On top of that, you can also choose the sensitivity of the alert. This can be used to tailor your alerts to your personal strategy. For example, you could set a trendline break through alert to have a sensitivity of $0.10 or $0.50. Whereas an intraday trader may prefer the $0.10 sensitivity, a swing trader is likely to prefer a less sensitive system.

Trendspider also launched a separate tool called SignalStack for automating trades from alerts.

Trendspider Platform Differentiators

TrendSpider is an amazingly effective and reliable analysis software. The machine learning algorithm spots trendlines that are literally invisible to the naked eye, making it useful even for the most sophisticated technicians. It’s also simply one of the top charting platforms we’ve tested – and we’ve tested a lot of them.

We expect big things from TrendSpider going forward. The platform launched in early 2018 after two years of testing and the team is still adding new features regularly. You can tell this is a company that is trying to innovate in this space. Quite frankly, the charting alone is worth the monthly fee, but subscribers get access to a full suite of proprietary analysis tools.

An Ever-Improving Platform (UPDATE)

We don’t usually revisit reviews just a few months after posting them, but we felt it was necessary for TrendSpider. This is one of the most actively developed platforms we’ve seen in a while, and the TrendSpider team continues to add new features. Here are a few of our favorite features that were added in the months following our initial TrendSpider review.

Faster data feeds – Always a plus.

New charting features –  The platform now features monthly candlesticks, volume moving averages, and advanced customization for existing technical indicators.

Ability to create custom trendlines – While the automated trendlines are effective, it’s helpful to be able to draw your own as well. You can also set alerts for the trendlines you draw yourself.

Multi-factor alerts – TrendSpider added the functionality to set alerts using a variety of indicators. For example, you could create an alert for a trendline break with higher volume and and overbought RSI. There’s a lot of potential here for traders who now how to take advantage of this feature.

Fibonacci alerts – You can now set alerts on Fibonacci levels.

Support/resistance heatmaps – You can now extend support/resistance heatmaps across the full chart. This is beneficial for two reasons. First, the automated heatmaps help traders recognize price areas of interest instead of getting caught up in the minutia of fixed price support/resistance levels. Second, this feature helps traders recognize historical support/resistance levels that may be relevant in the future.

Strategy backtester – TrendSpider recently introduced a strategy backtester that can be used to test strategies using a variety of entry/exit criteria. The tool allows traders to set specific entry and exit conditions to see how a trading strategy would have performed in the past. I’ve used a few backtesters and my favorite part about this one is the visualization. TrendSpider’s backtester shows the hypothetical entries and exits directly on the chart which makes it easier to visualize the strategy. You can also use some unique backtesting criteria that you won’t find in other platforms, such as entries/exits based on candlestick patterns (i.e. hammer)

Raindrop charts – Raindrop charts are a unique chart type that use VWAP data instead of the open/close data you’ll find in traditional candlesticks and bar charts. The left side of the rain drop represents VWAP from the first half of the trading period and the right side represents VWAP for the second half of the trading period. This new chart type paints a better picture of intraday trading activity.

Alternative data – TrendSpider now offers alternative data such as unusual options order flow, dark pool analysis, social media sentiment analysis, and insider trading information. All of this extra data is designed to give you more information about the price action in a stock.

We’ve been impressed with the rate at which TrendSpider continues to release innovative new features. These aren’t small bug fixes or marginal improvements – they significantly increase the value of the platform. You can test out all of these new features with a 7-day free trial.

What Type of Trader is Trendspider Best For?

TrendSpider caters to technical analysts and chartists. It’s powerful enough to be used by experienced technicians and straightforward enough to be understood by beginners. It’s also a great learning tool that can enhance your technical analysis skillset and train your eyes to spot patterns. It can also save you a lot of time when drawing lines and performing technical analysis.

We recommend this tool for traders who are familiar with charts and have a foundation in technical analysis. This is not a trading “system” that tells you where to buy and sell. It is a unique tool that adds a new layer of depth to your charting experience. If you are trading based on technical analysis, you will definitely want to give TrendSpider a try. It is one of the more unique charting platforms on the market and the company continues to release innovative new features that improve the trading experience.

TrendSpider is a tool that will greatly augment a trader’s ability to thoroughly analyze an interpret stock’s price action from multiple angles to parlay that market intelligence into action through trades

TrendSpider vs. TradingView

We can’t leave our TrendSpider review without mentioning its biggest competitor in the charting and technical analysis space: TradingView. TradingView is a behemoth with more than 550 million users, and it competes directly with TrendSpider for technical traders’ subscription dollars.

Honestly, it’s hard to go wrong with either TrendSpider or TradingView. Both platforms offer outstanding charting tools. However, there are some differences between them that could push you towards one or the other.

TrendSpider is better if you want to take advantage of its automated technical analysis tools. TradingView doesn’t offer automated trendlines or chart pattern recognition. TrendSpider also stands out for its multi-timeframe analysis, which can be really powerful for swing trading, and for its dynamic alerts.

TradingView is better if you want what is hands-down the best technical charting platform on the market right now. It may not perform technical analysis for you, but it offers an incredibly wide range of indicators and tools. If you can’t find what you need, you can copy custom indicators from the TradingView community or use the platform’s script editor to create your own.

TradingView is also quite a bit cheaper than TrendSpider. There’s a free plan available, and paid plans start at $12.95 per month (prepaid annually).

Check out our TradingView review and our TradingView vs. TrendSpider comparison for more details.

Pros

Very accurate trendline and candlestick identification

Customizable and flexible configurations

Effective automated Fibonacci retracements with precise high/lows

Conviction settings are great for newbies to learn and pros to use

Good customer support with one-on-one session scheduling available

Dynamic alerts give you more eyes on the markets watching for triggers

Enhances price interpretation with trendline spotting (every trendline!)

Cons

Learning curve may be steep for newbies without some background in technical analysis

Relatively new product so features are still being refined and added