How to Use TradingView Paper Trading, Fix Paper Trading Panel Not Visible Easily 2026

On any TradingView chart, the trading panel at the bottom lists the brokers you can connect, with Paper Trading, powered by TradingView, at the top. Selecting it opens a simulated account that fills against live or near-live prices using virtual funds. If the tab isn't there at all, the bottom panel is almost certainly collapsed, not the feature being unavailable; the fix is at the end of this guide.

Before your first trade, open Account settings to configure the account. You can reset it entirely, wiping orders, history, and positions and resetting the balance to a value you choose, and set separate leverage ratios per asset class (stocks, futures, forex, crypto). This matters because a fresh account's default leverage may not match what a live broker gives you: testing a strategy at 50:1 forex leverage when your real broker offers 10:1 teaches the wrong lessons.

Click a symbol on your watchlist to load it, then use Buy or Sell at the top of the order ticket. TradingView supports four order types here: Market (fills immediately at the best available price), Limit (fills only at your price or better), Stop (turns into a market order once a trigger price is hit), and Stop-Limit (a trigger price that then submits a limit order instead of a market one). Which one fits depends on whether you want the fill guaranteed or the price guaranteed; you can't have both.

The order ticket's Exits section lets you turn on a take-profit price and a stop-loss price, either as an exact price or in ticks from your entry. TradingView validates these as you type; a stop loss on a long position has to sit below your entry, and it will flag a price that doesn't.

Set both and you have a bracket order: once either the stop or the target fills, TradingView automatically cancels the other, so you're never left with a stray exit order after the position closes. The order info panel shows margin usage and leverage in real time as you set the size.

Once a trade fills, the bottom panel switches to Positions, with running Account Balance, Equity, Realized P&L, and Unrealized P&L updating as price moves. Orders and Order History log every fill and pending order, and Trading Journal keeps a timestamped record of activations and executions, useful for reviewing a session afterward instead of relying on memory.

TradingView's own documentation for collapsed panes gives two ways back in. Hold Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (Mac) and double-click anywhere inside the collapsed bottom pane to restore it.

If a Collapse Pane button is visible in the pane's corner, clicking it toggles the same thing (turn its visibility on under Chart Settings > Canvas if you don't see it). If that doesn't bring the tab back, check that a different broker isn't already selected in the panel instead of Paper Trading. As a last resort, reset the chart layout to TradingView's default: this only affects which panels and toolbars show, not your paper account, balance, or trade history, and it clears most layout conflicts a saved session can carry over.