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Narrator: Hey traders. I'm Justin Benzinger, a trade risk and resolution specialist at Schwab for over five years. Today I'm going to answer your questions about the thinkorswim® trading platform.
Gary79973 asks, "How can I add multiple symbols on one chart to compare on one screen?" So, what you'll go ahead and do is you'll go to your thinkorswim. We'll go to the Chart section and type in our symbol. We'll use Apple (AAPL) for today. And then we'll want to go to our Studies tab. You can go to Studies, Edit studies and search for the comparison study. Once you've added the comparison study, you can add multiple of them. And then you can go ahead and hit the gear on the far right, where you'll then be able to change the symbol that's being compared. In our case, I'll choose NDX. And you'll want to remember to differentiate the colors so that way you can tell which line is which. In our case I'll make NDX green. And then you'll hit okay again. Now you can tell that our NDX line down here is the green one and our SPX line is going to be the teal one. Meanwhile we have the Apple chart in the background.
"How are stocks found through a scan moved to an existing watchlist?" That's a good one. We'll go ahead and hop over to our thinkorswim. We'll go to Scan: Stock Hacker. You can go ahead and set up your own scan here. You can even scan for the results. You can save the watchlist as it is. Now, if you do this, it's static. Or you can save the scan itself by going up here next to the fire and hit Save scan query. We'll call this "def" for default. We'll hit Save.
We'll go ahead and go over here to our watchlist and our gadgets. We'll go to Personal and you'll see anything with this purple circle around it is a dynamic scan. Anything that doesn't is going to be one of the static watchlists we saved. We go here. It'll upload and every 3 to 5 minutes it'll rescan.
joeB956 asks, "How do I sort the watchlist to show the worst performing stock first to the best performing stock last?" So what you'll want to do is you go over your thinkorswim watchlist and you'll use the filters at the top of the headers. Here you'll see I have the Net change column, and you'll see a triangle pointing up and pointing down. If I click once, it'll go ahead and make everything in ascending order. This will mean the most negative stocks will go to the top and the most positive stocks will go to the bottom. If you click on it again, you'll then get the opposite. And then if you click on it one more time, you'll reset it back to default.
"Is there a quick way to switch between charts for items in a watchlist?" I like this one. This is a good question. So, you'll want to go ahead and use what we call the link feature. Here I have my link set to two. You can change it to any color that you want. Whenever I do this, any chart that is set to this same link feature, will go ahead and take the same input that I have clicked in here.
You can see my Apple chart is set to link 1. If I click on yellow 2. it's empty. But look here, if I click on the net change for SPX, you'll see that the SPX chart automatically pulls up. You can do this with multiple charts by hitting the link feature, setting them to yellow 2, and then anytime you switch between your watchlist here, such as going to QQQ, you'll see that all the charts with yellow two suddenly have the input QQQ.
"How do I change studies so I can choose the amount of days for my averages?" That's a great question. What we'll want to do is when we're on our thinkorswim, under Charts. You'll see I already have a simple moving average study. We'll go to Studies, Edit studies and what we'll see is that we currently have it set to five. If you hit the gear next to the study, you'll see length: five. You can go ahead and either type in the number, or simply increase it by the plus increment. Let me increase it here to 10. And then you'll hit okay. You'll see that the 10 took effect. And then we'll hit okay again. And now we'll see that our simple moving average across this chart is based on 10 days instead of five.
"I have a lot of studies and can't see the data at the top easily. How do we make this easier?" If we go over here to thinkorswim, you'll see I have a lot of studies and I can't see much at the top for my data points. What we can do is we can go to the gear, and then we can go to data box and change it either to floating or fixed. Floating will go ahead and set it up to wherever my cursor is. The data box follows.
If we go ahead and change it to fixed, you'll see the data box is now in a separate window, and I can place it anywhere on my screen. And since it's pinned, you'll see that anytime I click on my thinkorswim it doesn't go behind it. It stays on top.
"I'm traveling a lot, I need to make sure my chart time frame is set to Eastern at all times. How do I do this?" On our thinkorswim chart you'll want to go to the gear, and then you'll come down here, to time zones. Currently, we already have it set to New York but if we click on it, if we needed to set it to let's say, Tokyo time, we'd click on it, hit Okay. And now you can see the hours at the bottom are reflecting the time zone that I've selected.
"What do bid and ask mean, which do I click to buy or sell?" So, usually what you'll want to do is the bid is to sell and the ask is to buy. That's because we're going to meet buyers at the bid and we're going to meet sellers at the ask.
"Where can I see how many calls and puts have traded in a stock today and what does the PC ratio mean?" That's a good one. So, you can see where all the puts and calls have traded under Option statistics under the Trade tab.
On-screen text: The put/call ratio is the total put volume divided by the total call volume over a given time period. Generally, higher put volume (above 0.7) implied bearish sentiment, while higher call volume (below 0.7) implied bullish sentiment.
Narrator: And PC ratio stands for put to call ratio. We use this in order to gauge how many puts to calls are people buying. People buying more puts could mean they expect more downside. People buying more calls means more expectation of the upside. What you'll do is you'll go to the trade tab, and under all products at the very bottom, you'll see Today's option statistics. Here you can see the total calls and the total puts. And, over to the far right, you'll see the PC ratio.
"How can I see what the open interest is on an option?" So, in order, to find the open interest on an option we'll head over to our option chain under the Trade tab in thinkorswim. Next to filter and spreads, you'll see over here, I have Last, X, and Net Change. These are the columns. I'm going to go ahead and click on it. I'll see I got Theo Price and Mark. And right below that, Volume and Open Interest. We'll click on that. Open up one of our option series. And you'll see the open interest column right there. If you go down the row for each strike you'll have numbers. That's the open interest for that specific strike. These update daily based on the close of the options market the day before.
"Is it possible to bypass the order confirmation window?" Yeah, it's definitely possible to do that. We'll go ahead go to the gear. We'll go to Application settings, and then we'll go to Orders. Here we can go ahead and click away Show order confirmation and then Apply the settings. But be warned, once that order goes live and hits the market, if you don't cancel in time, it could come back filled.
sandib6616 asks, "Can the PL colors on the monitor page be changed to red or green?" You bet they can. You'll see at the top right; you'll go to your gear and go to application settings. There we'll come down to display. We'll see in the middle of our display we have Show color price ticks and then an empty box for position statement. We'll go ahead and click that on hit Apply settings. And there you go. You'll see red for down green for up.
Thanks, traders, for all your questions We love answering them Go ahead and check out the learn tab on schwab.com And don't forget to comment below. Happy trading.
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