• Help! I have so many questions. What’s a
good place to start?
You've come to the right place and thanks
for reaching out; we’re focused on making
education accessible to all, and thinkorswim®
could be a good launch pad to move forward
with confidence. thinkMoney is also a trea-
sure trove of trading discussion. And if
you look to the thinkorswim platform,
TD Ameritrade Network (found in the
Trader TV gadget) beams market com-
mentary, market education, and the exclu-
sive Swim Lessons. If you scan the tabs in
thinkorswim, you’ll see a new Education tab
where the TD Ameritrade Education team
is constantly building out courseware that
could take you from zero to guru. Also, don’t
forget our tried-and-true chatrooms, where
you can reach out and collaborate with other
TD Ameritrade clients. It doesn’t stop there;
we are on social media (hit me up personal-
ly @johnhart_TDA) and of course, there’s
always email and phone support.
Hi John, I’m mobile all day, but do most of
my technical analysis at night on my desk-
top. How do I get these technical analysis
drawings while not at home?
You’re not alone. Life is mobile today, and
you need to have all of your data with you.
It’s for this reason we introduced a massive
overhaul of the thinkorswim mobile charts.
You can now quickly add drawings to the
mobile charts and create and manage the sets
of drawings right from your iOS or Android
device. We went the extra step and made all
your drawings sync with the desktop, so no
matter where you are, you’ll have the most
up-to-date drawings with you, and there’s no
need for a refresh button. We synchronized
everything for you. It’s that easy.
I’m a volatility trader and spend a lot of
time looking through lists of stocks. I’m
trying to identify all the companies that
have positive EPS that might have some
likely near-term movement. Can you
help?
Sure. Here’s the short answer:
http://tos.mx/giLwFu
And here’s the long answer: Yes! The
thinkorswim scanner is the place to start
with this. There’s too much data out there for
anyone to realistically stay on top of it all. Set
the push notifications on thinkorswim Mo-
bile and then from the desktop, import the
link given earlier and add an alert when scan
results change (instructions can be found
here: http://tlc.thinkorswim.com/center/
release/ rel-09-10-2016.html ). This scan will
find every company with positive EPS, an
elevated Market Maker Move, and a higher
differential between historical and implied
volatility. Feel free to tweak the scan to match
what you’re looking for. Note the beauty of
this particular scan is that it’ll usually not
have many results. I like this because the cri-
teria are so tight that if something matches, I
know it’s worth my time to look at it.
MORE, MORE!
MUCH MORE
HISTORICAL DATA
The thinkorswim daily
chart data for U.S.
equities and indices has
been expanded to span
a full century—it now
goes back as far as 1902.
To see all the daily data
for a given symbol, go to
the “Daily” time aggregation menu and select
the option to show “Max
available.” Also, the time
frame menu now has a
“custom” option, which
allo ws you to display and
save specific date ranges
or periods.
INTRADAY IMPLIED
VOLATILITY
Implied volatility data for
all optionable symbols
can be displayed on intraday charts. To access this
data, change your chart
to an intraday aggregation. The “Imp Volatility”
study will work by default
on all intraday aggregations. Any thinkScript
chart studies you have
created using the “imp_
volatility()” function will
use this data automatically when applied to an
intraday chart.
FUNDAMENTAL
WATCHLISTS
All fundamental data in
the Fundamentals tab of
thinkorswim is available
as watchlist columns.
To add them, navigate
to the watchlist column
customization menu and
select the “Stock Fundamentals” category in the
dropdo wn menu. Dou-ble-click on the desired
metric to add columns
to your watchlists. Many
of the data points can be
customized by time frame
and display aggregation.
Once you add a column,
click to the right of the
column name to select
the period and aggregation of the data point.
TOYS FOR
TRADERS
FROM THINKORSWIM®
Ask the Geek
BIG IDEA: A LITTLE Q&A WITH JOHN HART,
MANAGING DIRECTOR, TRADER PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT AT TD AMERITRADE
“The education
team is
constantly
building out
courseware
that could take
you from zero
to guru.”
—JOHN HART
@JOHNHART_TDA
