Any Malaysian trader who has been in the game more than a year will tell you exactly that, your tools are working, or not, there is no in between. The TradingView free version is the equivalent of preparing a full Sunday roast using a butter knife. Technically possible. Wildly inefficient. The moment real money is involved, the restrictions of the platform cease to be cute nuisances, and quietly begin to drain your performance out. For more info you can read more here.
Let's talk cold numbers first. Pro provides 10 indicators simultaneously on the chart. Free caps you at three. To the Malaysian traders who cross-check Bursa equities with the forex pairs and the regional indices, three indicators is really a laughing matter. An appropriate configuration may incorporate a combination of moving averages, Bollinger bands, RSI, MACD and volume analysis concurrently - attempt that and you will be changing indicators in and out like a hawker stall that only has two burners. Your attention gets divided. Your interpretation in the chart is impaired. Decisions get muddier.
Real time data quality is also a hit with Pro as well. Free users cop delays price feed on volatile sessions- the time when correct information is most needed. Bao Shang, Bank Negara announcement days, overnight crypto swings. Those are not the times you want your platform to bring to you the information that is already 15 seconds old. That's not a data feed. It is a history lesson that comes just in time.
Infrastructure of alert differentiates hobbyists and traders who practice risk management as they should. Pro opens 20 active alerts at a time. You get one free. One. Malaysian traders that track many asset classes like local equities, USD/MYR, regional ETFs, and Bitcoin physically cannot track everything with their hands. Alerts become the second pair of eyes. Without them, you are just hoping the market trends in the direction that the market will move at the right time when you are watching.
Monthly expenditure is approximately RM65-70 according to the prevailing exchange rates. Most people can afford cheaper than a tank of petrol. Traders who agitate about this subscription and at the same time jeopardizing hundreds or thousands per position are having their priorities literally mixed up. The platform fee is stable and certain. Neither are losses due to poor tools. The process of upgrading does not entail spending more money, but rather preventing a gradual but insidious leak that the vast majority of traders on free tiers are unaware of consuming them.