Do You Need A Td Ameritrade Account To Use Thinkorswim

Dipping your toes — and your wallet — into trading? Depending on how deep yous're diving in, you're bound to hear about thinkorswim.

OK, enough water puns. Here's the deal: While sleek startups like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Webull make headlines as they cater to an exploding population of investors interested in the stock market, there are too scores of people trading on the loftier-powered platform thinkorswim. Owned by TD Ameritrade, which has roots dating dorsum to 1975, thinkorswim is known for its elaborate and customizable interface packed with research and analytics.

That level of detail tin be useful but intimidating, which is where we come up in. Here'due south a comprehensive guide to everything you lot need to know about thinkorswim.

What is thinkorswim?

Thinkorswim is a trading platform with desktop, web and mobile versions. The desktop version is downloadable software, and there are thinkorswim mobile apps bachelor for iPhone, Android, tablet and smartwatch.

The different versions have different capabilities, but overall, yous can trade stocks, mutual funds, ETFs (exchange-traded funds), options, futures, bonds, CDs (certificates of deposit) and forex (foreign currency) on thinkorswim.

Who uses thinkorswim?

TD Ameritrade has 11 million client accounts with over $1 trillion in assets.

JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, says thinkorswim is best for active traders and investors who are hoping to collaborate with the market. But because the platform has such a wide range of technical features and trading tools, experienced traders can relish it merely as much equally first-timers.

"It is very detailed. It allows yous to trade at a very bones level, or at the most complex level you'd similar to," he adds. "For options — you tin can practise something just like a simple covered call. But on the other paw, if you want to do a deep-and-wide, iv-month, 4-strike, double diagonal spread straddle-strangle swap, we're your guys."

Is thinkorswim free?

According to its pricing page, TD Ameritrade doesn't charge platform or data fees.

Thinkorswim pricing is as follows: Information technology offers $0 commissions on online, U.S. commutation-listed stocks, American and Canadian ETFs, and options (though options trades take a $0.65 per-contract fee). Over-the-counter stocks that aren't listed on a U.S. commutation come with a $6.95 commission. Broker-assisted trades generally cost $25.

Is thinkorswim safe?

TD Ameritrade is both a brokerage house and an investment adviser business firm, co-ordinate to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA. It'south also a fellow member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, abbreviated SIPC, which protects customers against the loss of cash and securities upwards to $500,000 should the brokerage firm fail.

TD Ameritrade as well has an asset protection guarantee; it vows to reimburse customers if they lose cash or securities because of fraud.

How to gear up up thinkorswim

Open a TD Ameritrade account and, for desktop, download the installer. A wizard will announced and walk you through how to install thinkorswim, but if y'all take trouble, you lot tin can telephone call client support.

Non set to start trading with your hard-earned greenbacks just yet? Try a newspaper money account. Thinkorswim's paper money feature, officially stylized every bit paperMoney, allows yous to do trading and familiarize yourself with the thinkorswim platform without take chances. Paper money comes with a practice margin account and a practice IRA account with $100,000 in them. Yous can meet your buying ability and net liquidating value in your Account Info gadget, located in the upper left-manus corner.

Kinahan says paper trading is designed to "become you used to the market." He encourages people to "put on positions and really see how they work."

(Note: When thinkorswim is in paper money manner, data is delayed past 20 minutes. The trading platform requires a funded account in club to access real-time market data.)

Whether you're using paper or real money in a live account, thinkorswim is full of gadgets and trading tools that allow you lot to develop and execute trading strategies. Among them are Alive News (finance headlines pulled from various sources) and Trader TV (webcasts of video news and assay), both located on the left sidebar. You can set upward a Watchlist hither, every bit well, that will brandish certain securities' ticker symbols and market data. You tin customize Watchlists, just if it'southward your first time on thinkorswim you lot may just want to play around with something standard like the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

You lot tin add and remove widgets like the Figurer, Quick Chart, Scratch Pad or even Tetris to the sidebar by clicking the + and gear icons. Resize by clicking and dragging the confined at the peak and correct of the different sections.

On the right are nine tabs: Monitor, Merchandise, Analyze, Browse, MarketWatch, Charts, Tools, Education and Help. They're cocky-explanatory — and clogged of data.

Buying stock on thinkorswim

To buy stock on desktop, pull up the Trade tab. You can type in the symbol on the All Products sub tab and see the name, last traded toll, gain or loss, whether it'due south like shooting fish in a barrel to infringe and where is the stock listed. Click Company Profile for even more detail, including thinkorswim's take on what drives the stock, valuation highlights, sources of value and key trends. (It's likewise adaptable, which is, in Kinahan's stance, "ane of the virtually powerful" parts of thinkorswim.)

Dorsum to the purchase process. There are a couple of ways to practice this, but one method is to find the Underlying department and click the ask price, labeled Ask X. An society class should come at the lesser. Enter how many shares yous desire, the cost, what society type you desire, and how long you desire it to be adept for. Then confirm and send. Read it over one more fourth dimension, and submit. It should testify up on your Monitor page.

Trade executions are generally fast: According to TD Ameritrade, the average time it takes for market orders to exist executed is 0.06 seconds.

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How to buy options on thinkorswim

To buy an choice on desktop, again navigate to the Merchandise tab.

Find the Option Chain section and type in a ticker symbol. Calls are on the left, puts are on the right. Select an expiration date and click on the enquire price (Enquire X). Then fill out the order form, entering your desired quantity and order type, locking in the price and time in force, and confirm. Press send. Information technology should at present appear on your Monitor page.

"We let you lot be basic and allow you complexity in everything that we practise," Kinahan says. "If y'all desire to tailor the order, yous can tailor the order equally much as you desire to."

Charting on thinkorswim

Courtesy of TD Ameritrade

Thinkorswim is famous for its charts — Kinahan says the trading platform has more than 400 different charting patterns, "so there's got to be one that yous can get really excited about."

The charts also offer extensive customization. You tin change the chart type, choosing from options similar Candle, Bar, Line, Equivolume and Heikin Ashi. The default chart style is a candlestick, with a toll cavalcade on the right and time forth the x-axis. Rectangular bubbles brandish the lowest and highest prices in the time frame; icons indicate earnings announcements and stock splits. Below, you'll meet a bar nautical chart that shows daily book.

Charting enthusiasts can adjust the fourth dimension frame, colors, cursor and fifty-fifty the background. Yous can click and drag to section off and zoom in on a specific time frame, make notes with drawings, add together studies such every bit volatility indicators, and share to your eye'south content.

Need help with thinkorswim?

The explosion in involvement in investing, trading strategies and stock trading over the past year — thanks to Robinhood, GameStop, Elon Musk and the like — means a lot of rookie investors take recently entered the stock market. But yous don't have to be an experienced trader to use thinkorswim. One of TD Ameritrade'southward priorities is education, so yous're welcome even if this is your offset time trading.

Kinahan says the thinkorswim platform wants people to understand run a risk right out of the gate. One of the mistakes new traders oftentimes make is looking at an opportunity and going starry-eyed at how much they can potentially gain, but traders with more feel tend to ask themselves, "What tin I reasonably lose?" From at that place, they consider, "Is what I can brand a decent tradeoff for what I feel I can lose?"

"We think we empathise trading and try to help people avoid many of the mistakes that we fabricated," Kinahan adds. "And that'south why we teach that commencement."

On the Analyze tab, at that place'south a Probability Assay tool that can help you determine whether a stock will move in the time to come. (You can also practise this past expanding your charts.) Active traders who do have experience — and the want to go deeper into the thinkorswim earth — tin utilize the programming language thinkScript to make their ain studies, trading strategies, alerts and more.

Need more info?

If you click on the Education tab, thinkorswim will take you to its Learning Center, which features guides on everything from platform layout to entry and exit strategies to the Forex Trader interface. The Learning Center also has webcast tutorials on how to merchandise futures and how to make use of the Calendar, an interface that includes earnings reports, conference calls and the similar. And, of form, off-site, there are YouTube tutorials for pretty much any thinkorswim question you can remember of.

Kinahan says usage of thinkorswim's official Teaching tab was up 300% last yr. The No. i video was a tutorial almost stock fundamental analysis.

"I remember that retail traders weren't given nearly enough credit for the amount of time they spent on education," he says. "People were not simply trading simply desire[ed] to learn how to understand better."

We're biased, but we'd say reading this guide is a practiced start.

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