foreign ERS this is Travis from Master the market and in this video we're going to be talking about
active Trader which is the order entry system used in the thinkorswim platform from TD Ameritrade
and we're going to break down how to use active Trader as well as go over some of the different
order types now in order to pull up active Trader what you have to do is make sure that you select
trade and then go down to active Trader and by default you can see here we have two charts and
we have two active Traders on the right side if you want to customize this a little bit you
can click up here under the on demand Tab and you can see there are tons of different options here
to customize this if you want a ton of different small charts you can have all of those in there if
you want just one chart and one active Trader just select one box you can also on the right side over
here instead of having the active Trader pulled up you can actually deselect that and you can add in
the time and sales for example you can also add in the level two and there are tons of different
ways obviously that you can customize this but just to keep it simple we're going to have two
charts here one over top of the other I'm going to deselect level two here deselect time and sales
add back the active Trader and then down here we're going to actually link these two charts
together so we're going to go ahead and place this as a red link we'll also place this as a red link
so now if we search spy for example up here it's going to also pull up spy down here on the bottom
if we go ahead and add in the chart down at the bottom we can now have one chart that is going to
be a daily chart and one chart that is going to be an intraday chart like the five minute chart
and in my opinion there's really no need to have two separate active Traders so I'm going to go
ahead and have the time and sales down here okay now with active Trader there are two options here
to buy and sell at the market if we click this little arrow to the left this is going to allow
you to change the number of shares that you're trading by default it's going to be 100 shares
now generally speaking I don't usually recommend traders to use Market orders and that is because
if you use a market order specifically with lower price stocks stocks tend to have a little bit of
a spread between the bid and the ask where the buyers and the sellers are lined up and if you're
using a market order you're probably going to be filled at the worst price that you could be
given the current spread for that stock so instead what you want to use is going to be a limit order
now limit orders with most trading platforms are going to be a little bit different than they are
here with the active Trader here in thinkorswim so what you would usually do is you would Place limit
order and then you would select the price that your limit price is going to be to buy or sell
the stock but there's not an option for that in active Trader what you have to do instead is make
sure that you have the correct number of shares selected and then you're going to hover over the
left side over here in order to buy at a certain price and if you wanted to place a limit order to
sell above the current price you would hover over the right side and that's going to show you where
you would be placing an order to sell so for example if I wanted to buy at 367 dollars per
share I would simply click on the left side over here to place an order then to buy 100 shares of
spy at 367 dollars per share again that's going to be a limit order and that is going to be to open a
position and the cost of that trade would be of course 100 times 367 dollars giving us a total
of thirty six thousand seven hundred dollars and then from there all I would do is click
on send in order to place that limit order now if you want to for whatever reason get rid of
that confirmation that pops up after you place an order all you have to do is Select Auto send here
and then if we were to click again at 367 dollars per share that's going to automatically without
that confirmation pop-up place an order then to buy at 367 dollars per share now I will say that
that can be a little bit risky because in that case if you were to accidentally tap somewhere
on this active Trader you may be placing orders that you didn't necessarily mean to place okay
and the same thing is going to be true then on the right side over here if you were looking to place
a limit order to sell your position you would simply look to go up to the price that you want
to sell at let's just say 367.50 and you would click over here on the right side of the screen
give yourself a confirmation and then go ahead and send your order now on the other side of
the spectrum we have to keep in mind that risk management is also very important when it comes to
trading stocks so let's just say that for example we got filled on our 367 dollar limit price so
we have a position then at 367 and let's just say that we wanted to risk 50 cents per share on that
trade so our risk would be down to 366 dollars and 50 cents if we wanted to immediately cut losses on
the trade once the price got all the way down to 366.50 we could then use the right side over here
below the current price to place an order that is then going to stop us out of that position
um so it's by default going to be a stop order if you're selling below the current price of the
stock and it is also going to be by default a stop order if you are looking to buy Above the current
price of the stock in that case that would be a stop loss for a short position to of course cut
losses in case the trade moves against your short position and now very quickly if we go up here to
the top of this active Trader box you can see that there is currently a grayed out button for
flattened position this is grayed out because I don't currently have any positions open however
if you're in a stock and you want to immediately get out of it for whatever reason whether it's a
long position or a short position what you can do is you can click on this flatten button and
that is going to immediately get you out of that position whether that be selling your shares
or covering your short position and that works for both taking profits and for cutting losses
okay so now hopefully you understand at least how to Simply Place some limit orders here in
the active Trader tool the next thing that I want to cover is going to be here under template
so one of the trading templates that I really like that's built into the active Trader tool is going
to be what is known as a trigger with bracket if you select trigger with bracket you see a bunch of
things that pop up down here and this is really just going to in its simplest form allow you to
simultaneously place an order to lock in profits and also one below your price of Entry that is
going to act as a stop loss so by doing that as soon as you get in the trade it's pretty much
going to be completely automated for you you're either going to lock in your profits at your
Target price or you're going to stop out of the position and take a loss at your stop loss price
so if we go ahead and change this here we have our trigger here which is going to be above the
current price so that's going to be the plus value of course let's just say for this example we're
looking to lock in a quick scalp of 20 cents per share and let's just say that we're going to have
a one-to-one risk to reward so we're going to also look to cut losses at 20 cents per share
so once we put that in we can see over here that if we expand this active Trader just a bit
once we kind of hover around the left side over here you can actually see our Target stop
start to move up we can also see if we go down further that our Target price is going to move
down and this is going to form that bracket that we're talking about that is going to
essentially make this an automated trade for us so if we were to place an order here to buy at
367.50 that's going to automatically then place a limit sell order 20 cents above at 367.70 and
then it's also going to place a stop loss order 20 cents below at 367.30 and now whichever one
of those is going to be hit first the other one is automatically going to be canceled
now you can probably see why this is such a valuable thing because one of the big aspects
of trading is locking in profits at the right time as well as cutting losses at the right time and
that can be very difficult when your emotions get involved in the trade so if you're already having
these plans to lock in profits at a specific price or cut losses at a specific price the
second that you get into the trade that's going to allow you to kind of take some of the emotion
out of your trading and simply trade based on your strategy and based on the chart itself
okay so I just wanted to quickly go over the active Trader tool here in thinkorswim uh because
again it is quite a bit different from a lot of the other order entry systems that other Brokers
and other trading platforms use hopefully you found some value in this and if you did please
make sure to give the video a like And subscribe to the channel also if you want to learn more
about day trading swing trading and even long-term investing or if you want to join us in chat and
come trade with our group you can learn more about all of that in the links Down Below in the
description but anyway thanks again for watching I hope you enjoyed and good luck with your Trading
foreign