Narrator: Hi, traders. The thinkorswim® platform is a powerful tool for futures traders. But if you're just using the default, you're probably missing out. Today, in this video, I'm going to show you how to customize the thinkorswim desktop platform, so that you have all the tools and information at your fingertips. Let's jump in.
OK, the first thing I'm going to show you how to do is set up some gadgets in the left sidebar, so you can see relevant information for futures traders no matter where you are in the platform. Then, we'll get into how to customize the Trade tab.
Animation: The mouse clicks the list in the side sidebar revealing a list. Create watchlist is selected a pop-up window appears.
Narrator: So first I'll start with an example watchlist that lists some common futures symbols. You can see I've already got a Watchlist gadget in my sidebar. So I'll create a new watchlist in the gadget by clicking on the existing watchlist name, then Create watchlist.
Animation: Futures is entered into the text box. Then the mouse selects the first text box in the Symbol column. Next, futures contract symbols are entered into the box and then Enter is pressed which takes the cursor to the next symbol box.
Narrator: I'll just name it Futures, and start to add some common futures symbols that we might want to trade or keep on our radar. Let's start with one of the most actively traded products: the S&P 500® or forward slash ES. In thinkorswim, all futures symbols have a slash before them. And I'll add some other common index futures like the NASDAQ®, Dow, and Russell 2000®, and a few commodities like crude oil and gold. Let's get the VIX in there to keep an eye on volatility. You can add as many symbols as you'd like. We'll select Save, and now you'll see over on the left side we have our watch list, with some of the futures symbols that we want to keep an eye on.
Animation: The mouse points at the Live News gadget in the sidebar. The mouse then moves to the bottom left-hand corner of the platform.
Narrator: You can see I've got Live News here. I'm going to keep and add another gadget. To add a gadget, I'll click the plus sign then select one called Trade Flash.
Animation: The mouse clicks on the gadgets button and list appears. All is deselected and only Large Futures Trade is reselected.
Narrator: This gadget allows you to see orders placed by other investors in real time. Many investors use this tool when attempting to track professional money managers. If you click on the categories button, you can see by default it shows all kinds of info like large equity trades or trades on illiquid options. But I'm going to filter it to just show Large Futures Trades that could potentially move the markets. So you can add any number of gadgets here, but we'll stick with these for now.
Animation: The mouse clicks on the Analyze tab, then the Fundamental subtab. Then a futures symbol is entered into the symbol look up box.
Narrator: Next, I'm going to show you where you can see any futures contract specifications. I'll jump over to the Analyze tab and then the Fundamental subtab. I could just enter a symbol in here.
Animation: The mouse selects the link button next to the symbol look up box and the link button on the watchlist gadget in the sidebar.
Narrator: Well, one cool trick is that you can link your watchlist to the other tabs in subtabs throughout the platform. So I'll select the link button and make it number one, and then set my watchlist here to number one, too. And now you can see that my Analyze tab shows the details of the products in my watchlist.
So here I've got the contract specifications for this future's product—Product, Multiplier, Tick Value, Minimum Tick, Settlement, if it's optionable or not on thinkorswim, Trading Hours, and all the available months to trade. This is a useful reminder of what the contract specifications are. You can also trade right from this tab as well.
Now that we've set up ways to keep an eye on the market and get info about contracts, we're going to head over to the Trade tab, where you can set up different layouts for looking at charts and placing orders. It's highly customizable, so you can set it up to fit your specific trading style and routines.
Now, you can see there's a Futures Trader subtab and an Active Trader subtab. Their defaults are slightly different, but they essentially are the same thing. They allow you to create a custom layout of gadgets with different trading tools. For the demo today, I'm just going to use Active Trader. But remember, you can use Futures Trader to do the same things.
Animation: The mouse selects the Active Trader subtab.
Narrator: So, you can see the Active Trader subtab is made of grids, which you fill with gadgets. By default, I've got two grids, each with a couple of gadgets in them. You can basically add as many grids and gadgets you like. But for this demo, I'm going to change to one grid, by selecting the grid button and choosing a single grid.
Now, like we did on the Analyze tab, I'm going to link this to my watchlist as well.
The buttons listed on the right side of the grid are the different gadgets I can choose from. So right now, the C for chart and AT for active trader are highlighted. These are commonly used gadgets. And I'll get into more detail about them in a minute. But first, I'm going to go through a few of the other gadgets really quick, so you can see what there is to choose from.
First, is the trade gadget, which provides different buttons for placing orders. You may want that for certain layouts, but I've already got those buttons in the active trader ladder, so I don't need it.
The buttons gadget is similar to the trade gadget, in that it provides buttons for placing orders but in a different layout. Same with the dashboard: It provides bigger buttons for buying and selling and includes additional info, like tick size.
Time in sales shows you the time, price, and volume of each transaction completed on the symbol. Chart two and chart three allow you to add multiple charts, for example, if you wanted to see different time frames or views of the same symbol at once.
Phase scores aren't really relevant for futures traders, so we'll skip that.
You can add level two quotes to see the order book for bid and ask prices.
And finally, there's a live news gadget, which is the same as the one we've got on the sidebar.
So, you can add and remove and arrange these in any way you like. But you can also go to this menu near the top of the grid to choose from some default layouts.
Let's go back to Active Trader plus Chart, a common layout. Now that we've got an overview of how the Active Trader subtab works, let's go in depth on one particularly useful gadget: the active trader ladder, also known as depth of market. It's a real time data table that displays bid, ask, and volume data at different prices. This is useful, because it can help you get an in-depth look at the price action in the markets.
Let's break down the different columns. The Volume column displays the number of contracts bought or sold at every price level for the current trading day. The row's shade represent the number of hours during which contracts traded at that price. For example, if there are trades at a price on two hours of the day, the volume bar will have two shades. If there are trades on three hours of the day at that price, then the volume bar will have three shades.
The Buy Order column displays your working buy orders at the corresponding price levels. The Bid Size column displays the current number of contracts on the bid price at the current bid price level. You can also click on these to place an order. The Price column displays the price breakdown. Prices are listed in descending order. By default, the increment is equal to the tick size of the contract. You can change this increment by using the zoom in, zoom out buttons in the control bar to the right side of the table. The current market price is highlighted in gray. To center the active trader ladder so the market price is exactly in the middle, select the center view button in the control bar to the right. The Ask Size column displays the current number of contracts on the ask price at the current ask price. You can also click on and ask price to place an order. The Sell Orders column displays your working sell orders at the corresponding price levels.
You can customize columns, too. Click on the small gear button in the top right corner of the table and choose Customize. The Customize Active Trader dialog box will appear. Here, you can choose to add or remove columns or change their order. The Current Set column shows which columns are currently visible, and the Available Items lists what columns I can choose from.
Let's suppose I wanted to see where I had orders filled. In the Available Items column, I'll select Fills and then either double click it or select Add Items. I'll remove the Fills column from my current set by double clicking it or selecting it and selecting Remove Items.
You can reorder the columns by clicking and dragging them or selecting one and clicking the Move Up and Move Down buttons.
OK. Now that we know how to customize the columns, let's look at how to place trades. We already mentioned that you can enter orders by selecting different prices in the bid or ask columns. But there are also buttons at the top of the gadget. Buy Market allows you with one click to enter a buy order at the market price, versus Sell Market allows you to enter sell order at the market price.
If you had a working order, you can attempt to cancel it with the Cancel button. Reverse allows you to put in a reverse order, which means changing a long trade to a short trade, or vice versa. For example, if I had one long contract, the reverse button would sell two contracts—one to close, and one to open a short position.
And the Flatten button allows you to send closing orders for all of your open positions at once, which could be helpful if something big happens in the market, and you're on the wrong side of it.
Animation: The mouse selects the '3' button and the text box fills with the number '3'.
Narrator: If we expand the section, you can see you can set the default quantity. If you normally trade three contracts, you can select three so that any time you pull up your order, it will default to three.
Animation: The mouse clicks on the Template list revealing different types of complex orders.
Narrator: You can also create different order templates. For example, let's look at first triggers with bracket. You might want to use this order type, if after your initial order fills, you want an OCO order, or what we also call one cancels another order, to automatically go to the market. You can change the brackets just like you would from the main order entry tab. If you always say, "Go off $5," we can change your limit to five, and we'll change your stop to, let's say, two.
There's also this auto send button here. If you click on that, this bypasses the order confirmation dialog box. I would be careful in selecting that, just because I think it's always good to double check your order in the order confirmation box. So I'm going to unselect that.
You can even customize the buttons in the gadget by clicking the big gear. It brings up a dialog box similar to the one for customizing columns, where you can add, remove, or reorder buttons. OK. Now, let's place an order by selecting Buy Market. In the Order Confirmation Dialog box, you see your market order with your OCO limit order at five points away, and your stop order at two points away. We'll select Send.
We bought one contract at 4418 spot 25. And we have a limit order working five points away, and a stop order working two points away from our purchase price. Notice how on the chart, you can also see the price levels of our order. Here's our limit order above, and our stop order below. You can actually change the price level of your working order by dragging it in this chart. If you do that, an order entry box for that new order will appear.
Now, let's look at the position summary section of the active trader ladder gadget. This is a customizable panel that displays important details of your current position. By default, the following metrics are displayed: buys and sells you've had during the trading day—and here we were already long one ES contract, before we placed the order for an additional one contract, and we now have two; total current position in the account; average price of the position currently in the account; and the profit/loss value since the position was open; and the current day's profit/loss. To change what data appears in this section, click on the actions menu, then Customize. Here you will find all the available items that you can add to your set.
Animation: The mouse selects the grid menu, then Save grid as which results in a pop-up window appearing.
Narrator: Now, the last thing I'm going to show you is how you can save your layouts, so you have these settings available any time you log in. Just click the grid menu and select Save grid as. We'll name it Futures Trading and select Save. Then, if you ever want to pull this same layout, just go to the grid menu and select it.
And those are just some of the tips you can use to customize the thinkorswim platform for futures trading. And remember, this is all for educational purposes only and not a recommendation for any trading strategy.
For more great investor education, check out all the content on our YouTube channel. And for more in-depth tutorials and walkthroughs of the thinkorswim trading platform, head over to Insights & Education on schwab.com.
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