Using Time Frame and Extended Data Tools on Charts

To access the time frame menu on thinkorswim, select the D subtab to the left of the Style subtab on the Charts tab. The drop-down menu offers prebuilt time aggregations on the Favorites tab.

Traders can customize their times frames by selecting the Time frame tab under the D drop-down menu. Traders can create time frames based on Time, Tick, or Range and determine whether they want an Intraday, Daily, or Custom interval. It's possible for traders to save up to 100 different custom time frames as favorites.

Once a trader is satisfied with a customized time frame, they can save it by selecting the star in the lower left corner on the Time frame tab. The time frame is then added to the trader's Favorites. Under D in the drop-down menu, traders can select Customize list… to edit the order or remove individual time frames.

This time frame tool allows traders to customize time frames for different strategies as well as experiment with specific time frames for individual stocks or indexes.

The thinkorswim platform offers expanded intraday and daily data available for individual stocks and indexes. All symbols offer intraday hourly data dating back as far as 360 days. Data for U.S. equities and indexes goes back as far as 1902. The Aggregation period on the Time frame tab changes from day (D) to month (Mo) or year (Yr) based on the aggregation period the trader has chosen.

Using this aggregated data, traders and investors can observe how individual stocks and indexes reacted to specific economic and sociopolitical events, as well as how macro price patterns resolved themselves. The past is not a guarantee of the future, but having the ability to study how the market reacted in the past could potentially offer helpful insights for the future.