How to use TD Ameritrade Think or Swim (TOS) platform for Day Trading

what's up everyone alright so in this video I'm gonna give you guys what you've been asking for my TD Ameritrade thinkorswim layout and you can check out the link below and you can download my latest layout even if you're watching this a year from now or two years from now you can still click the link and i'll have my updated layout available for download now during the video I'm gonna walk you through the reasons that I set up the platform the way I set it up I'm an active day trader and so I customized the platform in order for it to be really fast and really efficient because I want to be able to get into trades quickly and get out of them quickly so as you're going through the video if you have any questions please leave them below I will come back and respond to every question and comment post it on my channel and as always if you loved the video give me a thumbs up and feel free to subscribe to the channel alright let's get into my TV Ameritrade thinkorswim layout alright so on my screen you can see four different trading platforms right now we're going to talk about TD Ameritrade and how I have it set up for day trading now I set it up probably a little differently from what how a lot of traders would set it up and that I actively trade in more than one account at the same time this is kind of crazy it's hard enough to be profitable in one account but I traded multiple accounts at the same time and that's kind of where I'm at as a trader and I can make more money doing that so I've got Lightspeed on the left here so today for instance I've got Lightspeed on the left and I've got TD Ameritrade on the right and this is how I have them set up so while I'm trading this is a screen that I'm looking at and I'm actually going to show you a video here just like a real clip quick clip this is a screen recording of me trading this morning so I was as you can see on the Left I've got my Lightspeed and on the right I've got my TD Ameritrade and right down here you can see East signal the charts and I've got scanners right here on the side one of the things that's kind of a pain about trading is that a lot of traders end up using multiple platforms now one of the nice things about TD Ameritrade in contrast is that they have amazing charts so the only reason I use ecig kn'l is because they've got great charts and they have much better char than Lightspeed or sterling Lightspeed and sterling these are both trading platforms that are used with boutique brokers that really cater to active day traders like professional day traders making hundreds of thousands of dollars and one of the ways they cater to us is by providing incredibly fast execution speeds low latency platforms bare-bones just fast access to the market and discounted commissions well when TD Ameritrade went commission free it kind of changed the game for these boutique brokers they're offering now of you know discount commissions well that's not as good as free but the benefit of fast trading that still is there and I'll just show you for instance here I'm gonna go down to my settings and my hotkeys I can set up an order to buy a hundred shares of this stock by pressing shift one this is the sp500 shift one see how fast this is going from a you know zero to a thousand and now i want to sell half control x control x control x control x i'm selling half of my open position until it's gone so let me do that again up to a thousand shares sell half sell half sell half sell half sell half half half half half half and then the rest you can't do that with TD Ameritrade not only do you not have the hot key functionality but the routing is not as fast however you can make money there and you can you definitely use it for day trading and you can see that today I'm at five thousand nine hundred thirty six dollars and this isn't a hundred thousand dollar day trading account I've got about twenty eight thousand dollars in the account so you counts up like twenty five percent in one day so you can definitely day trade with TD Ameritrade it's not gonna be quite as fast so for you guys if your standard for speed is a little bit lower then you get the benefit of getting free commissions and not having to pay the hundred seventy dollars a month that I'm paying to use e Sigma because TD Ameritrade has awesome charts so let me get into how I've got TD Ameritrade laid out so this is how it looks when I log in each this is the active trader window so under monitor you go to the left go to trade or go to the right go to trade and then over to active trader and then this is how I have my layout kind of set up which you know might be a little different from how other traders use it because what you'll notice is that my monitor right here doesn't have any charts on it I put my charts on a second monitor and I do that because I like to have my open orders right in front of me and then I put the charts up on the other screen so I look back and forth but I like to have all of my orders in one place I've heard of some people who will set up their monitors so they have like you know let's say a monitor up here like this and then they'll float the the order window above it but I don't like that because then you got a you know be looking all over the place for your order windows and then you've got to go look for the place where you've got your you know like position window and to me it makes sense to keep all of that in one place and then just easier to glance over to look at the chart so anyways that's how I have it set up so um for you though if you're using TD Ameritrade is your primary platform that means you've got all this space right here you can take that out of the way all right so now we've got a little more room well one of the things that's kind of interesting is if you have this set up just like this this is obviously a huge amount of space under active trader so what most people would do is they'll go up to this little link right here there's a little button and they would space this out a little bit more so now we've got four windows by the way if you want my layout I went to setup and shared it and I put a link right in the description down below you can click that link and then you can download my shared layout if you want to just pop mine up there and make it fast so what I'm going to do I could type a pdn here and unfortunately if I train if I change this stock to s py it's not gonna change this one so what I need to do if I want them to change together so I need to link them with this order linking so now I'm gonna go s py and then I'll order link it to four order link this one to four as well and now if I trade this one a pdn it's got train right it's gonna they're all linked together so it'll change the trade window for all four of them of course you may say well you know I want to be watching the S&P 500 or SCS or whatever the case is on this side and on this side is a different stock and that's whatever you prefer so the way I would do it is I have my active trader right here now the reason I like this is because I want to see how many shares I'm currently holding and I need the active trader in order to see it if I take this away I have my level two and I could put up my chart and see the chart or put up the chart like this and but I can't tell how many shares I'm holding I can put up the the trade window here to buy and sell but again it's not showing me in a very obvious place how many shares I'm holding and so instead I use the active trading window because it shows the number of shares I bought and sold and my position so let's say I want to buy this stock and I want to buy one share I'm gonna click buy market hmm buy market so what's going on doesn't seem like I can't really tell what's going on is my order this says I have to buy orders all right so that's because this what this has the buy orders highlighted there but this is a little confusing now I can't tell what's happening if I minimize that window move it over here for a second you'll see that on this window it's showing my to open and working orders now it's after hours so I'm gonna cancel that order and cancel this order market orders won't fill after hours but that's kind of a problem and so that's why I have this window down here popped out this window is actually this whole tab so what I did was I went up here like this and I popped it out so I pop it out and then I put it right down here that way I can always see if I have open orders so now if I take in a place of by market right away it shows me I got an open order and then when I actually you know take a trade it'll show me right away where I got filled so I sold this stock and my fill was at 1394 so it's very clear where I got in and where I got out and I could certainly make this big if I want to so I can see you know all the orders of where I got in where I got out you can make it as big or as small as you want it's kind of whatever is enough so you see what you need to see without being without having unnecessary information the only problem to me is that I wish I could have this info in here in this window because now I have this kind of awkward situation of you know how do i situate this do I make this like really tall like that you know I mean I guess I I could and then maybe I minimize some of these to make it so I can make it a little bit more narrow kind of like this you know I could do that and if I click by market I see it up there and then I could cancel it right here cancel all so maybe that's how I would do it if I was using this as my only platform I'd probably do something like that and then just riously I don't need to see the expiration so I would go in here and remove some of those columns and kind of clean that up all right now you don't need for ladders these are your different ladders so and you do you might want charts and so what I would do is I would pop this off and down here I would put two charts like this so this is how I usually have these set up I actually typically put the bots that that chart on the bottom so um it would actually look a little different but but let's just go with this for right now so this is my five minute this is my one minute so I've got the one minute one day time frame that's the five minute and the only indicator that I need to see on this is my V web the volume weighted average price it's the most important indicator for active day trading it's not to say you couldn't add others if you want to the nine of the twenty moving average are great on the five-minute chart the 200 moving average is great on the daily especially important on the daily and just as just to show you this stock hit resistance at the 200 on the daily and when we were trading this morning we were like well it has no resistance until the 200 the 200 is very well respected and and typically I wouldn't have the same stock on both sides I just do for some reason there in any case so the 200 is important so this is what my layout looks like on my charts 1 minute 5 minute and daily so to replicate that in TV Amer trade I'm actually gonna have to open up I'm gonna have to go down one more row here and I'm gonna link this to number four as well and this one I'm going to let's see I'm gonna just scroll up here so I can see this take that off and put that on so now I've got the daily chart right down here so the oh no sorry this is gonna be the daily chart right there so on this one I'll show you we're gonna go to studies we're going to add study and then we're gonna go to moving average right here and I'm gonna add the moving average exponential all right so now I got a double click this and I'm gonna change it to 200 and I'm gonna have to change that color because I really want to do more of this like kind of like bright magenta that catches my eye the style the width I'm gonna go with to apply that's looking better there we go see nice and clean all right so now we've got our 200 moving average up there so I'm gonna bring this back down and I really only use the daily chart just to kind of check it in the morning and then you know sort of keep an eye on it as the day goes on are we running into resistance levels but I don't look at it constantly so once I've kind of analyzed the chart I can minimize that well I focus on the one minute or the five minute and sometimes I'll go like this because I'm focusing more on the one minute right now and then I'll say well let me go and check the five-minute chart just the 5 minute checkout and then I kind of slide it over that way so I go back and forth throughout the day based on time of day and stuff like that those of you guys if you want to learn more about my strategy I really encourage you to check out the links in the description I've got an online training that is about two hours that walks you through how I find stocks to trade every single morning where I get in where I get out I'm not gonna break that down in this video right here but if you guys want to learn about that I encourage you to check out those looks below so this is how I would generally have it set up and having the volume overlaid on price that's kind of personal preference I don't personally do that in a signal I have volume on a separate pane so you know you'd have to go in here to your studies and edit studies and then adjust this a little bit you got change the settings on it but in any case that's kind of the nuance stuff that's personal preference all right so we've got a PDF now so if I change this to the sp500 this will all update and you can see it's not the fastest but it's it's not terribly slow either this update I think updates a little bit faster you know but again like this is a it's 170 dollars a month for East signal so I would hope it updates really fast and this is free but it's it's really good for free so let's go back to a PDF alright so a PD n so that's on the left and then if you wanted a second stock on the right that's where I would have the second one generally and today was s NCR so this is the one I was watching on the right hand side so here we're gonna change this to like that we've got our two charts and then right down here and we've got the let's hope we got to go to number four or what was that would we link this to number two for yellow I go pike I just you know colors that I like so then we move this up a little bit turn that on off turn that on now we've got that we've got changed this from a one-minute over to the daily and then I can jump in here and add the 200 moving average on if I want to I'll just do it for the heck of it right now so moving averages and moving average exponential double click it once it's on there change that to a two because what we did change just to a magenta shade okay apply and there we go oops that's still a nine 200 okay all right there we go so this is kind of how I would have it laid out now generally I don't like focusing on more than two stocks at once you certainly could say and you know if you really you could duplicate this entire window across you know four monitors and be watching well two four six eight different stocks at the same time if you do that your computer's probably gonna run a little bit slower um I find it to be a little more than I could even handle watching I usually just like being zoned in on two stocks at once and now I want to show you a little bit about how I set up this area here so I have by market and sell Marcus so the by market that clicks that just pops up that order the only problem is that on a stock that's really volatile like this one you buy market and say you accidentally typed in you meant a thousand shares you actually typed in ten thousand it could be you could get a lot of slippage the difference between when you press it and when you actually get filled so I kind of like using buy ask now the nice thing with buy ask is that I'm getting filled at the ask price and not higher you know but there's some risk that my whole order won't fill and let me show you a the real time example of that so this is the video from this morning and where I put my order let's see go back to where I could jumped in so I'm gonna buy this stock on the right hand side with 3,000 shares right right around here okay all right so check this out so I'm gonna click this Buy button right here buy asked three times one two three just like that I pressed it three times and the order filled pretty quickly no doubt about it I mean that was a pretty solid fill but you know there was the risk that if the stock ripped immediately let's say the nine dollars that my entire order wouldn't fill because I said I'm only willing to pay 84 so right there where it was at 87 and potentially going higher and like right here for a second I only have 1400 shares so what I have to wait is I'm now on the bid buying at 84 I've got to wait for someone to sell me shares and someone sells me the shares whatever and I get filled my full three thousand all right so now I'm in the trade so that's why I use by ask I've done both and you know I think they're both okay by the ask feels a little safer when you're dealing we're dealing with a volatile stock so in here you can click on this settings widget and you can change which orders are on the first line and second line or which buttons so you can have by ask and you can add that item and then we would just move this up to right here and then you'll notice I have this one called join ask so join ask means I want to sell at the ask price so let's see sell ask add item and let's just say okay alright so there's so now this is on the second row which you know is maybe kind of a funny place for it I might want to if I'm gonna keep it there move it move it up so let's see move up to maybe right here maybe that makes sense by asked by market sell market join task and then cancel alright so and that's probably a better way to do it and I'll actually update that on my side here and then let's move that up I'm still kind of fine-tuning how I want to use the platform and what makes the most sense alright so and then we've got do I have to cancel oh I've the cancel all I've cancelled and cancel all and cancel all is actually better than cancel because cancelled dot dot brings up that second window and since I'm only trading one stock at a time cancel all is perfect alright so we're gonna say okay there the template I actually don't personally use any of the templates you can use the templates for bracket orders I just don't like to use them for the way that I'm trading I tried it and I did find it particularly helpful so those ones I take off as well remove item and okay so we'll say okay so now there's probably a way to save this as a default but I'm not totally sure what that is so I'll just remove this quickly and oops cancel that all right settings there we go so remove item and then we're gonna add the cancel all add and then we'll move that up and we'll kick that one off okay there we go so and I personally I haven't used the reverse so I'm gonna take that one off and I actually haven't used the flatten although I've heard that that's a helpful key because when you press flatten it gets you out of the position even if you have like sort of an odd number of shares it just immediately gets you right out so maybe I'll move that up to I don't know next to I'll put it next to the cell next to the cell the ask one okay so this is I would say this is almost exactly how I would use it these this setting right here you can see mine is a little bit cleaner on the left and this one on the right that pre-loaded has got a little more stuff going on I felt that I didn't really need to see the buy orders here because I'm using the level two on my other window so I guess that's the one thing that we still don't have here is whether or not you want to be using level two which i think is a must-have so let's see that's not the right one it's right here customized so we're gonna take away remove and I'm gonna remove volume and I'm gonna remove cell orders so I'm going to simplify it a little bit now the level two you know we're starting to run out of a little bit of space here so I'd probably end up saying well once I've looked at my daily chart I don't really need to see it anymore the level two that's not gonna work there let's bring this down a little bit so it probably end up putting it right down here and shrinking it down kind of like that okay so just like that and I'm gonna give you guys a link so you can download this exact layout if you want to take it and then kind of mess around with it you're welcome to do that so in the morning when I'm doing my pre market analysis I don't need the active trader turned on so I kind of move this whole section up I'd focus on the one minute the five minute the daily then once I've analyzed the daily I'd probably bring that down a little bit shrink it down focus more on the five minute in the one minute bring this down a little bit use the active trader a little bit I've done some of the pointing and clicking which means right here you click this and it's just sending an order right away turn on the click auto send if you want to send orders instantly so let's check out this live recording again so when I decided I wanted to start getting out what I did was and I put an order I was expecting at this stock if it broke over nine dollars which was the store technical resistance area here that it would probably rip really quickly up to at least 9 24 9 25 so what I went ahead it did was I put a sell order at 9:20 in 924 so let me go back to where I placed that order so I'm scrolling up here and I click once then I click twice and now see how I have two working orders the price is at 9:20 and 924 all right so those orders are working when the stock ends up ripping through 9:00 boom it rips through 9:00 I think I tried to add in this account I don't I'm not sure what happened but in any case it rips through and as soon as it rips through I'm gonna get my order filled watch that just like that boom my orders filled at 9:20 and the current price is 9:20 by 9:20 too so the active trader here I think is helpful for you know quickly throwing an order up on the ask now of course in Lightspeed I could just type you know I could just click like this and then click sell but I don't have this type of order entry window so give I don't have that I kind of have to work with what I have I would say that in terms of using space this is a little taking up a little more space than I wish it needed to but you know it's just kind of the way it is so you make the most of it and I think that this is a good way to have TD Ameritrade set up and this would give me trading on two different stocks at the same time with the orders window here so I can see what's going on now excuse me I'm gonna give you guys a couple of tips on settings number one application settings go here make sure on active trader this is set to zero order submission rate limit is zero if you have it set at 500 what's gonna happen is if you double click this the first order goes through and the second one asks you to approve it because you've exceeded the order rate the order submission rate so I'm gonna cancel those orders so now I'm gonna go back in here to setup I'm gonna bring that back down to zero and what will happen is now I can click this twice and I've got two orders I click it five times I've got five orders so it makes it much faster to get in and get out as you need to the second tip go to application settings go to system and if it's not already set to a real time quote speed make sure you set it to real time that is a really important setting all right now let's see so we've got this laid out again the one thing I really wish is they give us an ability to change the color settings here on the level too and I really do wish I had an ability to have an order prepared because what I often do in this account here as I say oh you know I'm thinking about buying a pdn let's say at fifteen twenty one or fifteen twenty five I put the order ready to go and then I put it a thousand shares well with TD you can't really do that I mean you could kind of do it by clicking here turning off the auto send and clicking here to buy and then it brings this up and then you click Edit and you're now editing the order and but that feels so clunky I mean and it's taking up all this space so I really don't like that you know it unfortunately is kind of one of those things that if you really want to make the most of the free Commission's you have to accept some sacrifices on the platform side and one of them is gonna be some execution speed sacrifice it's not gonna be as fast as Lightspeed this platform is faster hands down it just is you know and any platform any broker you're using sterling with is gonna be faster you will be able to trade like this you can just can't trade that fast with wood TV but it's a great platform if you kind of focus on one good quality entry and then one you know good quality exit kind of a little bit less active but more precise and being picky is not a bad thing as a trader so again I really encourage you guys to check out some of the links in my description if you want to attend the online training where I walk you through how I find these stocks to trade where I'm getting in where I'm getting out I think you'll learn a lot from it and if you want to download this shared workspace I'll put a link below where you can jump over I'll keep the most updated link on my website so you can jump over there and download it and if you guys have suggestions of things that maybe I could do to get this platform running even better for me feel free to leave them below I'm not an expert on it by any means but I've been testing it out and getting a little bit of a sense of how it works and I've been pretty happy with it so yeah so go you click here and detach this if you want to pop this out and float it to a different monitor alright so as always questions comments leave them below and I'll see you guys for the next video hey it's me again the most popular video on day training on YouTube was made by me you can check it out below if you haven't already and as always if you have questions leave them in the comments I personally respond to every question that's posted on my channel [Music]

Channel: Warrior Trading

Views: 393,070

Rating: 4.8911757 out of 5

Keywords: day trading, day trading strategies, trading strategies, how to day trade, beginner trading strategies, momentum day trading, stocks, trading, how to trade, stock trading, penny stocks, pdt rule, shares, float, volume, candles, profits, Wall St, finance, brokers, Ross Cameron, warrior trading, day trade warrior

Id: C4XZ_67c0Fo

Length: 28min 36sec (1716 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 17 2019