Hello, options traders. My name is Cameron
May, and today, we're taking a closer look at some
very nifty but possibly lesser known customizations that are
available on the Thinkorswim platform. So let's take a look. All right, so we're going to
begin by customizing the option chain. And to do that, I'm going to
head up here to the Trade tab in the upper left
of the platform. Click on that. And I've loaded
Apple by default. And before we begin customizing,
the very first thing that we might need
to do is just take a moment to acquaint ourselves
with the default settings. And then we'll start
to customize those. So by default, we have the
traditional expirations in white. We have the weekly
expirations in yellow, and we might have
other securities see different expirations-- quarterlies, for
example, on the SPX. But anything that's a
non-traditional expiration will show up in yellow. Otherwise, the traditional third
Friday of the month expiration show up in white. All right, so let's
open these up. I'm going to expand
the 18th of December. And by default,
we'll immediately see that we have our
strikes down the middle. We have our course on the left,
we have our puts on the right. And by default, we have
for strikes displayed. We'll also notice that we have
the default column headings-- last price, net change, the
bid price, and the ask price. So the very first thing
that we might customize is the number of strikes. It might not serve a trader
to just see a few strikes. We might want to look further
in the money or further out of the money. I'm going to click
on Strikes, and we can expand that
6, 8, 10, 12, 14, or even show all the strikes. So if I open up all on Apple,
that's going to be quite a few. As we scroll down
through that, you can see we have the
expiration option chain that's available for the
18th of December for Apple. Let's crank this back to
12, maybe a little bit more workable number. And we see each of these
columns and column headings. Right now, let's begin to
customize the column headings. So as we look at these,
we see that the last x-- that stands for last
price-- and net change both have this little triangle
in the lower right corner. That indicates that this
is a customizable column. You'll also notice that the
bid price and the ask price, bid x and ask x, do not have
the little triangle in the lower right. That means they're
not customizable. So there are a number
of different ways that we can customize
these customizable columns. Number one is we go
with the default layout. So right up here under
the layout title, you can see there's our
last x in net change. So if I click on
that, we can see a menu of potential new
column displays that can be selected-- last
price, net change. That's the default-- field
price and mark, volume and open interest,
implied volatility, probability of out of the
money, and delta and so on. So for today's example,
how about we just go ahead, and we're going to head
down here to the Greeks-- delta, sigma, theta, and vega. As I choose that, it not
only customizes the columns-- it adds to new column. So whereas before, we had the
last price and net change, now we have delta, gamma,
theta, and vega. So using that layout
menu is one way that the columns
can be customized. Another way is to just go to
the column headings themselves. Again, as I mentioned, if
there's a little triangle or arrow in the lower
right hand corner, we can click on
that column heading and individually
customize these columns. So for example, let's
borrow the gamma column. I'm going to click on that. And now I get a
menu, and this allows me to choose a whole range
of potential new columns that might be added. I'm going to go down to
option theoreticals in Greeks. And for example, how about
if we switch this over to implied volatility? There we go. So we can see that
that column now has been replaced
from gamma, now displaying implied volatility. Now a final way that
we might customize the columns that are displayed
is using the customized tool. I'm going to pop right back
up here to the Layout menu, and I'm going to slide
down to Customize. And this allows us to customize
not only the column headings but the number of
columns displayed. So let's select customize. And here we can see
a menu of items. How about we switch
this back to gamma? So I'm just going
to type in gamma, select that, add that
to our available columns in what's known as
our current set. And we can reposition
these as well. I'm going to highlight gamma. Let's move that up to
its original position. And I'm going to remove
implied volatility. And at the same time,
just for today's example, let's also remove vega. This will illustrate
the point that not only do we have customized
column headings but the number of columns. And we can just click OK. And now you can see those
columns are now displayed delta, gamma, and theta. And finally, if we
like this display, we can save this display the
way that we've customized it. I'm going to come back up to
Layout and select Save As, and I can just give this a name. For today, how about we
call it Custom Greeks? We'll click Save. And the next time I'm
in tinkering around with my layout, if I've
gone away from this and I want to switch
back to this layout, I could just come
right back up to layout and go down and
select Custom Greeks. And that will
display these columns as are currently
displayed at this moment. So now let's address
one issue that you may have already anticipated. That is, if we've added a
number of custom columns, it can get very
crowded very quickly. For example, let's
switch back here to our four default Greeks. And let's suppose that we've
decided to customize further. We come up here to
customize, and we start to add some columns. So how about we add
some probability? Let's type in prob. We'll choose probability
in the money and add that. Probability out of
the money-- add that. Probability of
touching-- add that. And we click OK. And you'll notice these
columns are getting crunched. There's just not enough
space or real estate. So how do we expand
that display space? There's actually a very
easy way to do that. It's a little tool
that can be overlooked. We're going to use what's
known as the filter. As of this moment, you'll see
that the filter is set to off. I'm going to select that. And you'll notice it's giving
us the choice very first to choose a side. As I check that box
for side, I can now choose to display just the
calls or just the puts. Right now, it's both. How about we choose calls? You'll see that in doing that
as I click away from that menu, we're now just displaying the
call side of the option chain, and now we have lots
of space to work with to add more column headings
through that customization tool, and it's not crowded. Now if we wanted to, of
course, we could switch back. We can come back up to sides. Let's switch that back to both. We can even then check the box. That's fine. But we're back to
this crowded display. So it may serve our purposes now
to come back up to our layout. Maybe we go back to
those custom Greeks from the custom
columns setting that we established just a minute ago. Now the next customization
that we're going to make is to the strike column. And for a trader, they
might wonder, well, why would I want to
customize the strikes? Well, for a vertical
spread trader, this can make a lot of sense and
for others using multiple leg options strategies in general. There are times
when we might want to place a vertical spread. We might want that spread
to be one strike apart. Other times, it might be
two or three strikes apart. So for example,
let's say that we are selling an out of
the money call spread. Maybe we're going to sell
the 125, 130 call spread. Well, a quick way to place
that order, obviously, is to come over to the bid
price and right click on that. And we're going to put in a sell
order for a vertical spread. Now that creates
a vertical spread, and this can be
customized from here. We can choose different strikes. So for example, if
we change our mind, we wanted to go to
a $10 widespread, or let's say we wanted to
do the 130 and the 120. We can just use the menu-- 120 to 130. We can customize the
quantity and so forth. But wouldn't it be nice if
there were just a quicker way to customize this strike
column so that instead of going to a $5 wide spread and
then changing it to a 10, can we just display it
as a $10 wide spread? Yeah, there's a way to do that. So I'm going to
delete this order. And we're going to change
our spread right up here. Now as I show you
this spread function, the very first thing
I'm going to do is show you another way
that we might have entered that 125, 130 vertical spread. And then we're going to
widen that to two strikes apart, maybe go for
like a 130 to 140. So I'm going to click
on spread single, and I'm going to change
that to vertical. And as I do this, keep your eyes
on the strike column over here. And you'll notice
that right now, it's displaying all the
individual strikes. But as I choose vertical,
it's going to pair up one strike with the next. And now we can see
potential vertical spreads. For example, there's
our 125, 130. So if I wanted to
enter that call spread, I could just come over to the
bid price and click on that to create a short
call spread order. And from here, of
course, I could choose to customize my strikes
further, change my quantity, and so on. But for now, our vertical
spread traders for whom speed is of the essence, wouldn't it be
nice if we could just skip this part where we're customizing
a pre-built order template, and instead, I'd like to see
maybe the strikes displayed where it's giving us the option
to choose a vertical spread that's two strikes apart-- for example, the 130 and 140? To do that, I'm going
to head right back up to our Spread Vertical menu. I'm going to click
on that menu heading, and I'm going to go
down to deep and wide. I'll explain what that means. As I point at deep and wide,
you'll see over to the right, we have a number of choices-- one month by one strike,
one month by two strikes. And I'm going to choose
one month by two strikes. So why is that? Well, let's say that we've
envisioned that 130, 140 call spread. Well, those are
two strikes apart. But both of those options
are still in the same month. So one month represented by our
trade but two strikes apart-- now I'm going to slide over
to the third side menu here, and I'm going to
choose vertical. And as I do that, you'll notice
here under our strike column we now have, hey,
there's our 130 and 140. They're two calls,
both in the same month, but two strikes apart. So now I could just come
over to the bid price and click on that. And you'll see that my
order has changed down here. We had a 125, 130. It's now 130 by 140 skipping
over that 135 strike. And I can just confirm and
send the order from here. Now the next customization
I'm going to be showing you will be addressing that question
that a trader might have-- how do I set up a scan
to look for stocks that have specific options
criteria that can do that repeatedly, consistently? I just want to find
stocks very quickly that fit my custom options criteria. Well, that can be done
using the Scan tool. I'm going to head up here
to the Scan function. By default, we might find
ourselves on the Stock Hacker. But I'm going to navigate
over to the Options Hacker, and we're going to
begin narrowing down the hundreds of
thousands of options that are found in the options
chains across all of the optionable securities. And let's just suppose that
we're setting up this scan. Maybe we're a bullish investor. We're looking for maybe
low volatility options that might be a
little less expensive. And we're looking for
a near-term trade, maybe something is going
to last a few days to maybe possibly a couple of weeks. How do we create a scan
for options that will fill that sort of an outlook? Well, here on the Option
Hacker, let's start to enter some custom criteria. So by default, we're seeing
delta in days to expiration. I'm going to switch
up the delta. Maybe we're going to look
for implied volatility. That's a filter
the options trader might use when they're looking
for more or less expensive options. And let's just say
that we're looking for implied volatility
between zero so we can set in the
low end of our range here-- and the high end,
we'll set that maybe at an implied volatility of 30. Now as we do that, you'll
notice that the histogram here narrows the field to show us
just how many available options actually fit those criteria. But we're still
looking at 259,000 that fit just that 0 to 30 range. Next up, let's stay here
with our days to expiration. We were looking for an option
that doesn't expire tomorrow. Let's say we wanted seven
days on that contract but up to a maximum-- how about again we put
that maximum up to 30? So that's leaving us,
boy, with quite a number. We're still seeing
hundreds of thousands of potential candidates. So I'm going to narrow this
further by scanning only in specific indices. Now notice right here
where it says scan in. That's set to all optionable. I'm going to select maybe
from our public watch lists. S&P 100-- now that's narrowed
us down from a couple 100,000 to now we're looking
at around 33,000-- still quite a handful. Maybe you want to
narrow that further. Let's go back up
to intersect with. And for today, how about we
look just for technology stocks? So this will be
describing a scenario where an investor is looking
to maybe place a bullish trade. We're looking for something
short term in that technology sector. So I'm going to go
down to by industry. And we're going to
narrow that down to-- you know what? Let's just go with information
technology and all information technology. So now we're looking
at just a few thousand. That might sound
like a lot, but when we're talking about
option chains that might contain dozens within
an individual security, that's narrowing the
field significantly. Now as we attempt to narrow
this field of matches further, we might think, well,
are we really only stuck with two potential options
criteria that we can select? No, actually, we can
select additional filters is what we call them. I'm going to add a filter, and
we're going to choose option. And the specific
filter that we're going to choose
today, since we're looking for a bullish
options candidate, we're going to click where
it says covered call returned by default here. And we're going to slide down
to the menu to option type. And that will allow us to
choose between calls and puts. So I'm going to choose
just calls today. And there, as you
noticed in that menu, there were a number of
other potential criteria that we might have selected. For example, maybe
an investor wants to add a requirement
for open interest. We come back up to
add filters so that we can leave implied volatility,
days to expiration, and option type as our
three pre-selected filters, and we're going to
choose option again. We're going to click on our menu
and go down to open interest. We choose our open interest. We can set that to a minimum. For today, how about we set a
minimum open interest of 500? Obviously, that's going
to narrow the field down significantly. For a maximum, we're
going to leave that open. But this just illustrates
how a trader can really set up a whole custom set of
potential options criteria. Let's say that we're
happy with this. Let's go ahead and let's display
maybe 500 potential candidates and then click Scan. And this is going to list for us
S&P 100 companies with options that meet each of our criteria. And we can scroll
down through these. Looks like we have
Apple, we have Cisco, we have Intel, and so on. And we can start to
investigate these further. But if an investor is happy with
a scan that they've created, they can save this is
what's called a scan query. So to do that, I'm going to come
up here to the second menu icon down from the top. I'm going to click
on that, and I'm going to select Save Scan Query. So as we do that, we just
need to choose a name. All right, so we can just
call these bullish options candidates or
whatever phrase you want to use for the
naming of yours. It's totally fine. I'm just going to click Save. And then at some future
date, let's suppose I've come into
the Option Hacker, and I've reset this
back to the default. So we're just looking
at an empty pallet, and we just want to
bring in that template that we had previously created. We could just pop right back
up over here to the same menu. We're going to load
that scan query. And since this was
personally created by us, we're going to choose personal. And there it is-- bullish option candidates. When I select that, you
can see there are criteria. So that's a quick
way that an investor might build a custom scan
that will repeat its results. It can go out and find
exactly the stocks and the options that meet
these pre-selected criteria consistently. Now the next customization
that we're going to set up is in the monitor tab. We sometimes get the question,
how can I set up my monitor screen so that I can see the
columns and criteria that are important to me? So as we move to
this monitor page, we can see our default columns. We see our instrument here. We have Apple,
AMD, and BA, so on. We have our quantity, days,
trade price, mark, mark change, profit and loss open, profit
and loss day, and buying power effect by default. But let's suppose
we're an option trader. We also want to keep tabs on,
let's say, our options Greeks. How can we add those to the
pre-existing column set? To customize those columns, let
me first open up Apple here. And you can see on Apple,
we have a bull put spread, and we have a long call. Well, let's suppose
that a trader would like to isolate Apple and then
follow a few custom column criteria that are
special to them. Very first thing that
we're going to do-- let's move Apple to a group. I'm going to right
click on the symbol. We're going to
select move group, and we have to add a group. So I'm just going to name this-- how about we just
call this Options? We're going to click OK. And you can see
that now Apple has been removed from our
unallocated group, and it's positioned
up here by itself. We could add others from our
unallocated to this group if we like, but I'm going to
customize this Apple Options group. To accomplish that
customization, we're going to move over
here to our gear icon. I'm going to click on that, and
we get the pop-up menu where it shows us our current set. This is the default set-- quantity, days, trade price,
marked, and marked change. And in the left column are
all sorts of additional column headings that we can select. So for example, let's
start to add our Greeks. I'm going to type in delta. That's going to
choose from the menu. It's going to narrow that
menu down to just delta. I'm going to choose
that and add that to our existing column set. And let's do that
also for maybe gamma. So let's add gamma, theta-- let's add that-- and vega. So now you can see that we
have a larger current set. But maybe we want to change also
the organization of this set. So if I move this down,
you can see by default, we have quantity first, then
days, trade price, and mark. And that matches with quantity,
days, trade price, and mark. So the order that's
displayed here becomes the order it's displayed
here in our monitor window. So let's suppose that we want
to move up our Greeks to just next to quantity. So I'm going to click on vega,
and I'm going to move that up. We'll select theta,
move that up. Gamma, move that
up, right next to-- well, let's position it
right next to maybe theta. And then finally delta-- move that up next to gamma. As a matter of fact, let's nudge
delta up a little bit further. Let's make it right
next to quantity. But once we're
satisfied with where we've position that group,
we can just click OK. And what we'll see now
as we look up at Apple is there is our custom
headings-- quantity, delta, vega, theta, and gamma
organized in any arrangement that we prefer. And then we go on to
days, trade price, mark, mark change, and the rest. Also, just as importantly,
it hasn't made any changes to our other groups. So we can not only
create custom groups, but we can create
custom arrangements. And obviously, at
this point, you might ask, well, how
do I save this group? There's actually
not a requirement to save this function. If we just leave
it as it is and we were to shut down
Thinkorswim, the next time we launch Thinkorswim, this
is now our default display. So it's some very quick and
handy potential customizations. Now the next
customization that we're going to learn is going to
address an issue that arises frequently with traders
that like to trade rapidly, and that is, how do I create
custom order templates? For example, let's suppose
that one's an options trader, and they want to buy an option. But they want to have
a custom template where they sell the option
if they doubled their money or they sell their
option if they've lost half that option's value. So let's go to the Trade tab. And we're just going to
stay here with Apple. I'm going to go to the 18th of
December for an example trade, and let's start
to build an order. Let's suppose that we're going
to buy a long call at the 120 strike, but our plan is to
sell and take our profits if we've doubled the
value of that investment or if we've lost half its value. So I'm going to right
click on the ask price and enter a custom buy
order with an OCO bracket. Now this is the default
setting on Thinkorswim, and the OCO stands for
One Cancels the Other. In other words, I'm going
to enter to sell orders. And once one is filled, we
want the other one canceled. So we're going to
select with OCO bracket, and that creates this
default order template. And I can see that this
is by default in order to buy 10 contracts and then
to sell those, selling 10 at a limit if the price
rises, selling 10 at a stop if the price falls. Now right now, the price of this
option is trading around 430. I'm going to lock this order
template so this price doesn't float as price changes. The markets are still open right
now as I'm creating this video. Now by default, you'll see that
Thinkorswim enters an order, a limit order to sell,
if prices rise by $1 or if they drop by $1. But this does not meet what
this hypothetical trader had in mind. So what we're going to
do is customize this. First thing that I'm going
to do in the customization of this order is click on
the little chain link here. I'm going to click on that,
and that breaks the link. I'm going to click on the
other one and break that link. And you can see now that
the template has changed. Instead of showing
$5.30 and $3.30, I now see plus $1 and minus $1. But we want to step this up not
by dollars but by percentages. So I'm going to change that to
percentage by clicking on it twice and do the same
thing for our stop. And then I'm going to change the
number in that display window. Let's change this to
plus 100 and minus 50. So I'm literally just
clicking in the window and changing the values. So now we're creating
an order template that will buy the options
contract at the current price at a limited price,
sell if it doubles, sell if it reduces by half. Now I'm also going to come over
here and change these orders to GTC. That stands for
Good Until Canceled. So that means the orders remain
in effect for up to six months or until the order fills or
until I choose to cancel it. Finally, let's unlock this
value and let that price start to float again. Now before we submit
this order, I'm going to come down
here to the Save icon. Looks like a little
old computer disk with a little menu next to it. I'm going to click on that. And let's give this a name. So this is going to be our
template from here forward, and we can save this. We can come back and
retrieve it very quickly. Let's just say this is
for a long call OCO. Whatever you want
to call it is fine. But I'm just going
to click Save. And I'm now prepared,
if we wanted to, we could submit this order. But to make the point here,
I'm going to delete this order. And let's suppose
now we roll the clock forward three or four days. And now we have an interest in
doing this Apple transaction where we're thinking
of buying the contracts and then selling if the
price happens to rise or if it happens to fall-- rise by 100%, fall by 50%. To do that, I'm just going
to come here to the ask price again. I'll stay with the same
strike on the same stock. And I'm going to right click
here and go to buy custom. But now within this
menu, you'll notice, hey, there's our long
call order template. As I click on that, it
creates that default template that we've already saved. And now I could just
click Confirm and Send. And before we submit this, we
could quickly read over this. Buying 10 Apple contracts
with the 120 strike-- right now, the limit
price is at $4.35. We're going to sell those
if the price doubles or sell if the
price falls by half. And I'm going to
send that order off. We'll see if we
get a quick fill. Yep, we just bought
those calls-- bot them for $4.30. And now we're going to
go to our Monitor tab. And I can check
my working orders. And we can look for
those Apple calls, and you can see right here
is that Apple transaction. The order is filled,
and we're going to sell if the
contract value doubles or sell if it falls by 50%. Now if you remember, that pop up
said that we bought for $4.30. Doubling $4.30 is
to sell at $8.60. If it falls by half,
half of $4.30 is $2.15.. So we'll sell at $2.15. So that's one quick
way, an example of how an investor might set
up a custom order template and how they can save
that order template. And now you can just sort of
let your imagination run wild. What are the sorts of orders
that you might construct within your own
account that simplify your usage of the platform? So those are some very simple
but potentially powerful customizations of the
Thinkorswim platform. If you enjoy these
kinds of videos, head over to our Education
Center at tdameritrade.com or check out our
videos on YouTube. And finally, if you like
videos that are specifically about Thinkorswim, you may
want to check out the learning center at tlc.thinkorswim.com.
