Clarifying "Once per bar" and "Once per bar close" alert option

Jan 10, 2019

Since I can't find any official documentation about this, I am posting this to help others like me who struggled sorting this out.
When creating an alert, be it a custom alert or not:
- "Once per bar" will not wait the bar close to trigger the alert. If the condition is triggered once but ends up to be false at bar close, the alert will have triggered but will not show on the chart and backtest.
- "Once per bar close" will wait for bar close to trigger the alert. With this option you are sure to stick with the backtest and avoid less strong signals, but waiting for bar close might reduce profits.

Jan 15, 2019

Note

More precisions:

A "Once per bar" alert will trigger on the first tick of the bar which alert condition is true. A "Once ber bar close" alert will only trigger at bar close if the alert condition is still true at bar close.

Use "Once per bar" for manual trading. The alert will trigger sooner but is not as strong as if we waited bar close. Profits and risks are increased.

Use "Once per bar close" for automated trading. Unlike "Once per bar", a "Once per bar close" alert of the same type (buy or sell) cannot trigger more than once in a row. Thus it is suited for a trading bot which send buy and sell orders to a broker. Also those alerts correspond to the backtest results given buy the backtest version given with each indicator.