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.
So first I'll start with the watch
list of symbols futures traders might want to keep an eye on.
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.
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 Ford slash ES.
In thinkorswim, all Future 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 click 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.
You can see I've got Live News here.
I'm going to keep that but close some of these other gadgets
to make room and add another gadget
by clicking on the gadgets menu then clicking Delete gadget.
To add a gadget, I'll click the plus sign then
select one called Trade Flash.
This one's super useful for futures
traders, because it allows you to see what large investors are
doing in real time.
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.
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.
Well, one cool trick is that you can link your Watchlist
to the other tabs in subtabs throughout the platform.
So I'll click 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.
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 clicking 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 real 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 II 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 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 shade of rose 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.
Price display is the price breakdown.
Prices in this column are listed in descending order.
By default, the increment is equal to the tick
size of the contract.
You can change this increment by clicking 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,
click 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
click Fills and then either double click it
or click Add Items.
I'll remove the Fills column from my current set
by double clicking it or selecting it and clicking
Remove Items.
You can reorder the columns by clicking and dragging
them or selecting one and clicking the Move Up,
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 clicking 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,
whereas Sell Market allows you to enter
Sell order at the market price.
If you had a working order, you can 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 vise 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 close all of your positions at once, which could be helpful
if something big happens in the market,
and you're on the wrong side of it.
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.
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 one cancels other 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 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,
because I think it's always good to double check your order
in the Order Confirmation box.
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 clicking 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 click Send.
We bought one contract at 3888.25.
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--
we were already along one ES contract,
before we placed the order for an additional one contract,
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.
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 click Save grid as.
We'll name it Futures Trading and click 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.
We really just scratched the surface
of how you can customize thinkorswim
for your trading style.
For more in-depth thinkorswim tutorials,
head to the [? Learning ?] Center at tlc.thinkorswim.com.
And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel
to get notified when we post new videos.