Hello everyone, and welcome to Schwab Coaching. My name is Cameron May. I' m a Senior Manager and Education Coach here at Schwab, and this is Getting Started with Thinkorswim. And you know some traders have a need for speed. They really want to get their orders entered as quickly as possible, and so we' re going to be taking a look at a tool on the Thinkorswim desktop software platform that' s actually called ActiveTrader. We' re going to be talking about how trades can be entered very quickly using that tool, getting familiar with its navigation and customization. We have a lot to talk about, but before we can get to that, let me first of all say hello to everybody that' s already chatting in out there on YouTube.
Hello there SpeakTruth and Chris, Will, Scott, Life in the Fast Lane, David, Eva, Tony, everybody else. Thanks for joining us week after week. I really do appreciate your attendance and your contributions here. If you' re here for the very first time, I want to welcome you as well. And if you' re watching on the YouTube archive after the fact, enjoy the presentation, but be aware that you' re invited to join us in the live discussion. This webcast series kicks off promptly at 3 o' clock Eastern Time on Mondays and we d love to have you here, but also I want to let you know that my very good friend Kevin Horner is going to be hanging out in the chats with us.
Kevin' s going to be addressing any questions that I can' t get to just during the flow of the presentation as long as they' re on topic. So thanks for being there, Kevin! And Kevin and I would like to issue an invitation to everybody watching to follow us on X. That' s the best place to connect with your favorite presenters in between these live streams. So you can find Kevin on X at Kevin Horner CS. You can find me there at Cameron@ Kevin Horner CS. All right, but let' s go to it. The first thing that we always do is pause to consider the risks associated with trading. Bear these disclosures in mind. The information here is for general informational purposes only.
It should not be considered an individualized recommendation or endorsement of any particular security, chart pattern, or investment strategy. Options carry a high level of risk and are not suitable for all investors. Schwab does not recommend the use of technical analysis as sole means of investment research; investing involves a wide variety of creative manners right now. So let me set an agenda for today and as I do this I do want to get a quick gauge, chat and let me know are you familiar with the active trader tool on the Skim swim charts or not, see where where we all are along our own personal learning curve with the uh just a quick yes or no so in any Hermetic case.
Now we pick ourselves with this active trader tool it is designed for the starch data 40 reports to be designed for hopefully be able to submit their orders more rapidly. I' m going to show us how I might do that and how we might set things up in advance and just be as possible. Okay. So we' re going to take a look at the platform, acquainted with the navigation, customizations, apply even some example trades today. So looking forward to it. All right. So Will says no, not familiar with it. Tony, no. Eva and Chris say yes. Watson knows. You' re saying we' re having a little bit of sound issues. Well, we' ll keep an eye on that. Eva, keep me posted. Sound is not right. Okay.
Sounds like the producers are working on it. We' ll just continue for now. Let' s go right to that desktop, the Fingerswim desktop software. And I' m going to be using Bank of America as our example today. All right. But let' s pop over to the desktop. Off to the far right are a number of tabs. And it says, Mike, you' re getting, okay. Sound is improved now. Perfect. Thanks, Kevin, for letting me know. Tony, thank you. But we have this row of tabs off to the far right margin on our charts. And if you know, if a trader wants quick access to trading, this is not what we' re going to be spending the bulk of our time on, but there is a trade button right here.
We can click to enable some basic trade features. Nice, big, green Buy button, a nice big red Sell button. Cancel, reverse, and flatten some other tools. We' re going to be getting acquainted with those. I don' t need to explain how these work because I will explain how they work using our active trader tool. So anytime we want to activate one of these tools off to the far right, we just click on it. And then to shut it off, we' ll click on it again. So just as an example, you' ve seen me click on the trade, turn it on, turn it off. Let' s turn on that active trader tool. And then we' re going to be getting acquainted with those. And then we' re going to be getting acquainted with our active trader tool.
Turn it back off just for some quick repetition. But an initial benefit immediately becomes obvious for those traders who are technically oriented, who like to use charts in their trading. As we Replacing trades using this tool, we still have immediate access to our charts. So that can be nifty. And actually there is some interactivity between these two tools. So this is the active trader tool. The navigation of it, pretty straightforward. Right up here at the top are some trade functionality buttons. So we' re going to go through each of those. We can also customize the trade quantity down here below. There' s a row right here that will describe our trades as we place them. That' s sort of a position row, whether we' re buying or selling, whether we have existing shares, the average price of the trade, profit or loss since we opened, profit or loss for the day.
And then down at the bottom, we have a ladder is showing us what the retail price tea was. On the left, you have a trading price viewing customizations to the right, as opposed to just 這個 tr边先 저희가 called this, but this is showing us current and streaming price levels with the current price highlighted right there in gray. And now there are customizations for each of there and gray. And there are customizations for each of these fields over here to the right using the little gear icon, using the menu icon, also the gear icon right there. So there are customizations for each of these fields over here to the right using the little minute icon, using the menu icon. Also gear icon right there.
So that' s the general navigation, but should start of these fields over here to the right using the little minute icon, using the menu icon, also the gear icon right there. So that' s the general to be quick. So if we' re looking at something on our chart, we want to quickly place a trade. If we have opened this active trader panel, if we, let' s say we wanted to buy some shares of Bank of America. Well, if I click on buy market, that' s going to take us right to an order popup and we could just fill this out just as we might typically do. So buying 100 shares of BAC at a market price, obviously market orders carry risk. This right down here, I' ll have a disclosure.
With market orders, prices can change quickly in fast market conditions, resulting in execution prices that can be different from the quotes displayed at order entry. All of this is pretty familiar to us, fairly quick. How can we make this quicker? Well, right here, you' ll notice there' s a button that says auto send. What do you think happens if we activate auto send and then we click buy, or then we click sell? Yeah, if I click on buy market, keep your eye on our screen here, it' s actually going to buy some Bank of America shares. Now, I' m going to make a further customization before I do this. By default, the system is going to be prepared to buy 100 shares. We can choose other increments if we like, right?
But not everybody buys in these 100 share lots. These defaults are taken from your other stated preferences, according to the platform' s general settings. And those can be accessed right up here. So before I begin, to tinker with this, let' s go up here to the little, to the gear icon in the upper right, the far upper right. This is to change the settings for the entire platform. So this would be for the active trader and for the trade tab among other trade functions all throughout the platform. But let' s set some order defaults under, maybe I did that a little bit too quickly. Click little gear, go to application settings right at the top of the menu, then go to order defaults.
And we can change, for example, the default number of stock shares, default quantity of stock shares to be purchased. And the increments, you know, instead of going from 10, like the default, or from 100, like we saw in the default on an active trader, up to 300. Let' s just say maybe we go increments of 10. We can change our time and force preferred default here. But if we apply those settings, now you' ll notice this is different. 10 increments. See how I can click those now? 10 share increments. In any case, we' ve checked our auto send feature. And if I click buy market right now, it is and purchased. That' s how fast that is. Now, in some less liquid securities, of course, there can be other market influences that can cause the execution to be slower.
But the order entry is now really, really quick. Right? What if I wanted to sell those 10 shares that I just purchased? Well, I can click on the sell market. If I' ve enabled this auto send, those shares, if I' Ve done that in the same account where I purchased the shares, those shares are sold and we' re in and out just that quickly. Now, that' s using that auto send feature. We don' t have to use that. If I uncheck that and I click on sell, this creates a more traditional pop-up, the order confirmation dialog box where I can read through and make sure this is really what I want to do. On both of these transactions, as a quick reminder, we' re trading stocks as examples here.
So there aren' t any commissions to be paid here, but there can be commissions on other types of orders. Okay? There we go. So those are pretty straightforward. Well, let' s add that position back. Let s get back into another 10 shares. We' re going to buy 10 shares at the market. No commission on this transaction, but it is a market order. So again, prices can change quickly. We' re not guaranteed that we' re going to get the price that we' re seeing on our screen, but I' m going to send that order off. And we' re now back in those 10 shares. There' s an order waiting to be filled. And we bought $39. 91. Now you' ll notice that' s activated these other buttons for us.
So first of all, we have something called a reverse. What in the world is a reverse? And by the way, for all of these functions, I could have auto send enabled. I' m going to leave that disabled now and know what that is. Okay. But if I select reverse, this actually is going to reverse the position. This is when a trader, let' s say they own 10 shares of a stock. And they think, you know what? My opinion of this stock has completely changed. And I not only want to get out of those 10 long shares, I want to get right into 10 short shares. Now, as I demonstrate this, I got to emphasize selling stock shares, short has unlimited risk, right? It is an assumption by the trader that the stock is about to go down in value.
But if it goes up in value, it can keep going up and up and up and up. And we can lose a lot of money if the trader remains persistent against a stock that continues to rally. So be aware of that when we' re discussing short selling. And there are lots of other risks we need to be aware of. So as always, educate yourself on any topic before maybe exploring trading it. Okay. But let' s click reverse. And the system' s going to say, Cameron, are you sure this is going to buy back or sell the shares that we' re in and sell 10 more to get us into an opposite position by selling 20 shares total? And if I say yes, boom. We' ve now put in a market order to sell 200 shares of stock.
Pardon me, not 200, but sold 200. 20 shares, getting us out of the 10 long and into now 10 short. Okay. Well, let me get out of that. I' m going to buy 10 more, cover that short position. Okay. As a matter of fact, why not? Let' s auto send this one. Buy back those 10 shares. And let' s additionally, let' s get back into 10 more shares. I know that as we' re trading these, demonstrating these functionalities, it can feel like a lot to keep track of, but just look at each function independently. And of course, this session is being recorded to be posted to the archives. As long as we don' Let' s hit like a technical glitch, we should have this posted relatively quickly after the conclusion of the session.
So if you need to go back and reacquaint yourself with any of these tools, any of the concepts of these tools, you can do that. Okay. So let' s click on, buy another 10 shares. There we go. So we' re getting to 10 shares. And let' s also say, we wanted to put in a stop order on those 10 shares. So we' re going to put in a stop. Let' s edit this order so that it is just, instead of being a market order, let' s do a stop order here. And let' s say with the shares trading up at $39. 91, we have a stop. I don' t know where the trader wants to plan to exit. Let' s say if it slips down to $38. 00.
And let' s say that' s the example here. Make that a good till canceled order. Again, not a trade that would generate a commission. And with stop orders, there' s no guarantee that the execution price will be equal to or near the activation price. So selling at $38. 00 is not guaranteed here. That' s just our trigger price. But in any case, so we now have 10 shares and we have a stop there. Well, let' s talk now about what flatten means. What do you suppose flatten means? We know what reverse means. Get me out of what I' m in and get me into the opposite. Flatten means get me out of everything associated with this stock. If I own the stock, sell it. If I' m short it, buy it.
If I have any open orders, cancel those. Flatten everything, right? You can see how that could be a time saver for a trader who' s trying to keep tabs on everything that' s happening with a position. So if I click flatten, it' s going to ask me again, Cameron, are you sure that you want to do that? Because we' re going to get, we' re going to get, we' re going to get, we' re going to get rid of everything having to do with BAC, sell. We' re going to cancel that stop and we' re going to close the position by selling 100% of open shares. And in this case, that' s 10% of those shares. And if I say yes, it' s going to flatten everything. All right.
So we' ve already learned some interesting features right up here, buying and selling, reverse canceling. And we can customize the quantity here, but we can also set up custom order templates for those traders who have a habit of placing the same types of orders over and over and over again. Let' s say our trader likes to buy stocks. And then if they go up two bucks, they take the profits. If it drops a dollar, we trigger a stop to get out and hopefully manage the losses. It might, it might serve their purposes to speed things up, to have a template, a go-to template for that. So let' s set up a custom template. And this would be, essentially a first trigger that a bracket order.
So let' s, let' s choose a trigger with a bracket. So what this does is that whatever we do, it' s going to have a bracket order in order to sell and take profits or sell and take losses under specific conditions. So let' s tell the system what we want that bracket order to look like. So let' s say our preferred quantity, if we' re buying 10 shares, sell those 10 shares, let' s say $2, that' s going to be our limit. And we' re going to make that a good till canceled order. Or if price falls down $1, that' s going to be our stop. And we' ll make that a good till canceled order. So once we' ve created that, we can actually save that as a template.
So we might call this an OCO order. And let' s say, plus $2 or minus $1. Okay. Well, you can just give it whatever name you prefer, whatever' s meaningful to you so that you can remember what, how you created this. So if I save that as one of my templates, you' ll notice now that' s found right here in that list of order templates. So now let' s experiment with this. Let' s come up here. Click on buy market. We don' t have our auto send selected right now. So we' re going to get the opportunity to review this order. And you' ll notice out saying, okay, Cameron, we' re going to buy 10 shares at the market price that we' re going to sell those 10 shares.
If this stock goes up two bucks or sell those shares, if it falls down $1 and both of these orders are triggered by order number one. In other words, these two don' t go to effect, unless and until that first order is filled. And of course, there are important reminders down here at the bottom. Hey, Cameron, this is a market order and with market orders, prices can change quickly in fast market conditions, resulting in execution prices that can be different from the quotes displayed at order entry. Or with stop orders, there s no guarantee that the execution price will be equal to or near the activation price. And I' m gonna send this order off. There we go. So now, keep your eye on this. This order is about to fill.
We just bought those shares at 39 . 95. There will now be an order up here to sell if the stock happens to rise by $2 or sell if it happens to fall by $2. All right. So we' ve learned how to navigate the buttons, the standard buttons, how to customize these. Now finally, down below, we' ll see some information here regarding our position. Now, if you recall, I' We have purchased 10 shares, then I purchased another 10 shares with a bracket order around it. This is starting, actually, right now our current position is plus 10, sold the 10 shares earlier, but this keeps track of how many shares we' ve purchased, how many shares that we' ve sold. It tells us our net position.
Right now, we' re long 10 shares at a price of $39. 95. That' s how much we bought those shares. And it' s keeping tabs on whether we' re profitable or losing money overall. So right now, profitable on the current position of 10 shares, but overall on those other examples that I did, we lost a few pennies. Now there are other things that we can customize here if we want to add to this display or add to this display. And I' ll let you explore these customizations on your own. But for example, down here in the order field, if we want to, let' s say have our time and force displayed, our TIF, let' s add that and you' ll notice that' s displayed now down here, it' s going to be on the second line of our order field.
And if I click, okay, now we can see our time and force and that can be customized right there. And once we set up these customizations, we don' t have to save them, they' re just automatically saved on Thinkorswim. Another thing that we could do here is customize what' s displayed positions. We can see an average price displayed. We can see profit or loss. Let' s see. We have most of those have already been selected. That' s okay. But these customizations can be made by removing and replacing just as the trader sees fit. Let' s just click okay there. But then finally, we have this area down here that' s known as our ladder. And this is showing prices starting with the current price of the stock.
And you can see if you look just up above our chart, $39. 94 is the current price. Well, there' s $39. 94 here as well. Now, if we move up and down the ladder, we can kind of lose track of where the actual price is. So to reorient ourselves, we can always click on ' center' that view. That' s the double-headed arrows here. And it' ll just reposition the current price right in the middle. But we can also see in one- penny increments, prices above the current price or prices below the current price. And if I were to click on the bid on the left side or the ask on the right side, that' s actually prepared to place buy and sell orders for me. Yeah.
Somebody says you can' t believe how time flies and how this goes so quickly. Right. Well, if the current price is $39. 93 and I go place a buy order at a lower price, that actually creates a limit order. You' ll notice as I point at that bid, it' Saying, Cameron, we' re prepared to place a limit order. If I click on a bid above the current price, it' ll place a buy stop order. On the sell side, if we try to put in a sell order below the current price, well, that' s typically where stop orders are placed. So if I were to click down here, that' s typically where stop orders are placed. So if I were to click down here, it just creates a stop order.
You' ll notice that at whatever price we selected. Now, or if I go above, it creates, pardon me, I was above the current price, that creates a limit order. Click below the current price, it creates a stop order. Now, I think it s useful for some traders, they look at this and they say, well, it' s only in pennies. It' d be nice if we had a little bit larger increments. You can actually do that by using a stop order. So if I were to click below the current price, it creates a little bit larger increments. You can actually do that by using the magnifying glasses off here to the right. So let' s recenter and let' s click the zoom out.
And that' ll change it from a one penny increment to two, and then from two to five, and then from five to 25, and then from 25 to 50, and then from 50 to a dollar. It really just depends on how many times you click the little zoom, but you' You notice after those series of clicks, instead of looking at every penny, we' re looking at every dollar. And as I move up and down my, uh, my ladder, to maybe click to place my orders, keep your eye over here on the right, on the, uh, on the, uh, chart, because this is also showing us where that price is on our chart. Do you see that as I move down in price, it' s moving down the chart with my crosshairs.
As I move up in price, I can, uh, set my crosshairs, for example, here, oh, 37. 98 on my horizontal crosshairs on my chart, looks like that might be a support area. So I' m going to click on that support area, and I m going to click on that support area, and I' m going to click on that support area, and it' s already set to, let' s say, place a stop right at that support. So yeah, lots of nifty little tools here. Um, let me just zoom back in as I do that, make a series of clicks. I get back down to these penny increments, and then I can recenter by clicking on that center view. All right. Now, the final thing I do want to point out is that there are customizations to the, the displayed columns.
I' ll let you explore those, but those can be done right here. So we click on that little customize button. Everybody I think here watching now knows how to customize. We click on the gear and we select customize, and we can choose, remove some of those columns if we' re not using them, add other columns that might be more useful to the trader. But once the trader has everything all set up and they' re familiar with the navigation of that active trader tool, I think you can see what a time saver it can be for those that just want to see their chart and want to do these quick click order entries, right? Guys, we' ve accomplished what we set out to do today. We, we wanted to get acquainted with the tool.
We wanted to set up some trades and place some example trades, and we did quite a few of those. Time for me to let you go enjoy. LizAnne Live is coming up next, but I do have some recommendations for you for additional resources that are available to you in between these live streams. Number one, make sure that you' re following Kevin Horner and me on the X. You can find Kevin there and Kevin HornerCS. You can find me there at CameronMayCS. Great way to connect with your favorite presenters. Now another thing is that, and by the way, to follow us doesn' t cost you anything. Doesn' t cost anything, nor does it cost you anything to subscribe to our Trader Talks channel. So you just go right down below the display window right now, and click on subscribe.
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It helps the presenter know that their efforts are appreciated. It also helps their webcast get a little boost in the YouTube algorithm. All right, thanks, Kevin, for helping out there in the chat. I' m gonna do one quick scan through the chat and make sure that I didn' t miss. Was there a survey? Nope, not today. Okay, go enjoy the rest of your day. I will look for you in a future webcast. I' ll also look for you next. But whenever I see you again, until that moment arrives, I wanna wish you the very best of luck. Happy trading. Bye -bye.