Charts
Updated 6 October 2026, 4 min readA price alert watches one level for you and tells you when the market gets there. It places no order and moves no money. It lives with your trading account, not on your device, so an alert set in the browser shows on your phone, and it goes off whether or not the terminal is open.
Set an alert on the chart
On the web terminal, press the bell in the chart toolbar. The terminal says Drag on the chart to the alert price, then release. Press on the chart, drag to the level and let go. A dashed alert line appears at that price and a confirmation shows the instrument and the level.
You do not choose a direction. If the level is above the current bid, the alert waits for the price to rise to it. If it is below, it waits for the price to drop to it. The label on the line shows which, with an at-or-above or at-or-below sign.
On the iPhone and Android apps, tap the bell on the chart rail, drag to the level and release. The Price Alert sheet opens with that price already in the Alert Price field, the instrument's current price above it, and the line You'll get a notification the moment the instrument touches this price. Adjust the number if you need to and tap Create Alert. When the instrument already has alerts waiting, the bell opens the Price Alerts sheet first, with a New Alert button at the bottom.
Set an alert from the Alerts tab
When you know the exact number, typing it is quicker than dragging. Open the Alerts tab in the panel under the chart. The web tab has a row that reads Alert Me At:
- Choose the instrument. It can be any instrument your Broker offers, including ones that are not on your chart.
- Type the price and press Add Alert.
As on the chart, the direction is set for you. A price above the current bid waits for a rise, one below it for a fall.
The first time you add an alert in the browser, the terminal asks to show notifications. Allow it if you want to hear about alerts while the browser is in the background. If you decline, the confirmation reminds you to allow notifications to be told when it triggers.
The Alerts list
The Alerts tab lists every alert on the account with its Symbol, Condition, Price and Status. Status is Waiting until the price reaches the level and Triggered after. On the web the Condition reads Rises To or Falls To. Each row has an Edit and a Delete button. Edit opens Edit Alert with the price filled in, and Save replaces the alert at the new price. On the phones, the Price Alerts sheet lists the alerts still waiting on the instrument you are looking at, each with a bin to remove it.
An alert fires once. After it triggers it stays in the list marked Triggered, and it will not fire again if the price comes back. If you want to hear about the same level a second time, add a new alert.
Move or change an alert
Every waiting alert is drawn on its chart as a dashed line, and the line drags like an order line. Drag it to a new level and release. The alert is replaced at the new price, and its direction is worked out again from where the new level sits against the market, so an alert dragged from above the price to below it becomes a Drops Below alert.
On the phones you can also select an alert and edit it in the same sheet, with the old price filled in. Saving replaces the alert with one at the new price.
When it triggers
Alerts are checked against the bid price, the same price your chart's bars are drawn from. A Rises Above alert triggers when the bid is at or above your level; a Drops Below alert when it is at or below. If you set a level based on the ask, remember the spread sits between the two.
When an alert triggers:
- An open terminal shows a Price Alert message on screen.
- A browser that allowed notifications shows one titled eTrader price alert. Click it and the terminal switches the chart to that instrument.
- Your iPhone or Android phone gets a push notification if the eTrader app is installed and signed in to the account, even when the app is closed. On the iPhone a price alert arrives with an alarm sound rather than the usual tone, and Android files price alerts under their own Price Alerts notification category, so you can give them a different sound in the phone's settings.
The notification switches in Settings cover trade events such as fills, stops and closes. They do not silence price alerts. You asked for the alert when you set it, so it is always delivered while it exists. To stop one, delete it. The push notifications guide covers the other kinds.
What alerts do not do
An alert is a message, not an order. Nothing is bought or sold when it triggers. If you want the market to act for you at a level, use a pending order or a stop loss and take profit on the position instead. Those sit on the Server and fill without you.
The phone apps hide the bell while the chart is on Tick. Switch to any bar timeframe to set, see and move alerts there.