What's up Everyone Ross here from Warrior Trading in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through how to use Tv Ameritrade's Thinkorswim platform for active trading. If you are thinking about day trading or you're already a day trader, it's important for you to know that while Td Ameritrade is one of the most popular brokers out there, and Thinkorswim is one of the most popular platforms, when you install it out of the box, it is not customized for day trading. And that's because, of course, think about their demographic. The majority of people using Thinkorswim and using Td Ameritrade are not active traders.

so the platform out of the box when you first install it is really customized for someone who's taking a couple of trades here and there. At the end of this video, I'm going to share with you a few of the critical settings that you need to enable on your account in order to maximize the performance of the platform because out of the box it is not tuned for active trading. This is very important if you're going to be an active trader using Td Ameritrade, and I know a number of traders who are using it. I know traders who have made seven figures on Td Ameritrade.

so it's not to say that it's a platform only for beginner or retail traders that are, you know, kind of novice. You can totally be a successful trader on Td Ameritrade, but you've got to make sure you tweak those settings to get the most out of it. So the topics today. I'm going to walk you through in brief: installing the Thinkorswim platform.

I'm going to show you how to import a layout, and I'm actually going to give you a link where you can download the layout that I use when I trade with Thinkorswim so you can download my layout. I'll put that link down in the description, I'll pin it in the comments. The link will be hosted over on my website Warriortrading.com so you can jump over there and you can download that link, and then I'll show you how to import my layout right away. Now the next thing is setting up your Thinkorswim platform as an active trader, so there's a couple settings that I'm going to walk you through.

I'm also going to show you the Active Trader section and kind of how I have that laid out. I'm going to walk you through number four, setting up hotkeys so you can take very quick trades, getting in, getting out, and this just for instance. This is a keypad that I use now. I use this for making videos and broadcasting on Youtube, but a lot of traders will use something just like this for pressing the buttons.

Boom see, I press that button. Something happens. But you can do that just for trading as well. So for getting in and out of trades and things like that.

All right. So back to the whiteboard and then I will end with the critical settings that you need to make sure you enable to get the most out of the Td Ameritrade platform. Sound good? Okay, let's go ahead and jump in. Let's get over to the screen so you can see here on my screen we've got Thinkorswim download very easy, very easy Google and you can click on this link from Td Ameritrade of course.

Always make sure you you know which site you're clicking on. This is Td Ameritrade and right here you can go down here as a Windows user and you can install 32-bit or 64-bit So I've already done this so this has been installed and now I'm going to go and launch the platform. Okay, so before you enter your username and your password, you can actually click on this settings widget right here and you can increase the memory usage on the Thinkorswim platform. Now you're going to want to think about the type of computer you have.

You don't want to overload your computer, but I usually bump mine up to sort of in the middle of the range just to give it a little bit more. uh, memory allocated to the platform. Because one of the things with Thinkorswim is that it's um, it's kind of a heavy platform. It's not super super lightweight.

There's other platforms that other folks use for for active trading, including myself that are much more lightweight that are really run very, very quick. but Td Ameritrade's not one of them. So I'm going to go ahead and log in here and then I'll show you the screen as soon as I'm logged in. Okay, so once you've got the platform installed, you can log in using your username and password and then it's time to install your first layout.

So if you have a layout from a friend, that's fine if you want to use my layout, that works too. So what you're going to do is you're going to go to Setup and then you're going to go to Open shared item right here. And this is where you'll paste the url of my layout. so down the description or in the pinned comment, you can go over to Warriortrain.com where I have the layout that I share with Warrior Trading members and you can go ahead and paste that.

There you paste it, you click, preview, you click import, and then you go to setup and that new layout is right here so you can then click on that. Then when you click on that, it's going to switch over to this Active Trader window. So this Active Trader window actually looks just a smidge different. When you install it, it's going to look like this.

This is how it is when, um, when when you install, it's going to be for a grid of four windows. So you've got one, two, three, four. So with this Active Trader area, this is where we're going to get into talking about the Active Trader. This is gives you the ability to open a number of different grids as much as many as you'd like.

and then when you click on this little link, click the number two, notice that this is a two. This is a two, so these are all lined up on the same the same stock, right? So by doing that now if we switch this to time and sales, if you pull this stock up or whatever stock it is, all three will update. So, Lg, Vn, and my workflow. Generally I use scanners to find stocks to trade.

So Lgbn popped up a little while ago so I wanted to use it kind of as an example. So the stock pops up. I can either click to buy just by clicking right here. Anywhere on here is an instant order to buy the stock, or I can type in here and click the number of shares I want to buy and then click, buy, ask, or buy market.

When I'm ready to get out, I can sell market or join the ask. I always try to sell the ask. That's what I always want to do. I always want to try to sell the ask.

If I have open orders that haven't filled, I can cancel all and I can flatten the position. which is I only have 100 shares right now. You can see the quantity right there, but if you had like 1122 shares rather than having to type in, You know, 1122 and then oh my God I typed it wrong. You just click flatten and that'll close the position for you.

So I know I always have auto send turned on so it won't bring up the confirmation window. Otherwise, it'll bring up this confirmation window which would slow you down. So let's just say um, if I did this, See, it's going to bring up the confirmation window and then you're like oh my God. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Send the order, send the order and it's just that's not. It just slows me down too much. So I turn on auto send. But when it comes to the pointing and clicking, note that that just did it for 100 shares.

Well, wait one second. Why did it send it for 100 shares when I have 10 shares typed in right here? Maybe it didn't Maybe it was confused. What if I do 25 shares, it sent it for 100 shares? Again. Okay, we've got to go into the settings so we're going to jump forward here and I'm going to show you one of the settings that you need to change.

You're going to go to order defaults and you're going to change this to whatever you want your order default to be. So if you want to be a thousand shares, a thousand shares. If you want it to go up and down by increments of a thousand, you change it right there and then. just like that apply.

This is now going to try to send it for a thousand shares. so that can be a little bit confusing because the level two works differently from what you have typed in right here. This is actually the Active Trader right at the top and I had the level two sort of so close to it that it looks like it's the same, but it's not the same. so the number you type in here doesn't correspond to what happens here.

It's a little a little confusing, but you get used to it so. but the reason that I like to have this on here is because I can point and click and if I turn on the auto send then I can point and click very quickly. Now these orders are going to reject because I don't have enough buying power in this account to buy a thousand shares. which is fine.

Um, so you could go over here and you would see under the monitor. you could go to canceled orders and you would see your orders that filled and you would see your orders that are working and you would see the orders that didn't fill because not enough buying power. So that's fine. All right.

So now go back to trade back to Active Trader and if I wanted to. So let's say um, I want to sell 100 shares. Now this is where it could be a little bit confusing because I can't click here to sell 100 shares because this is for buying. This is where I'd have to go like this.

I'd have to go ahead and type a hundred and then I can go up here and I can actually scroll up and then I could click. Let's see, I'm in at 78. So I could click sell. you know up here and I could put the limit cell at what's like 12.45 So you see the line of approximately where that sell order is.

You could do that for setting profit targets. I honestly don't do that very often. Usually I just when I'm ready to get out, I click join the ask like that and my order's going to be sitting at the ask at 28 and it'll get filled and you know, whatever it'll it'll get filled if it goes over 28 or I'll have to keep waiting. So and over here on the time and sales, the layout that I have.

I just kept it simple like this. but if you want to do to do a grid of six, you certainly could. and you could have another set of charts here or whatever the case is. So now let's talk for a second about hot keys.

All right. So hotkeys are important for the way I trade and you do have some hotkey options with Td Ameritrade thinkorswim. All right. So we're going to go in back to settings, application settings and you'll see the hotkeys are right here.

Okay so now what we want to do is we're going to minimize General and we have Active Trader enabled and notice I have bar by Market as shift one. Okay so my layout when you install it is gonna have buy market as shift one so if I press shift one it's gonna buy market to whatever I have right here. Whatever I already have typed in. This again is for the Active Trader window.

We've got Cell Market which is Control Z. We've got Cell Ask which is Control K and I usually would put little stickers on my keyboard. If I was a beginner trader I would do that and that's what I did just to help me remember what keys, do what, and then cancel All is uh, Control Q. so cancel all and just like that.

That gives me the hot keys that I feel like I absolutely need. So apply settings. So let's see. Um so I could do Control Q and I cancel that open order.

Now I'm going to do Control K and my order is on the Ask right now at 24 right? I'm going to Control Q and cancel it and I'll show you here. Um, let me just move this over a little bit more. Okay, so you'll be able to see down here. So Control K, there's a sell order out right there.

So my sell order is at 24 and then I press Ctrl Q. The sell order is canceled so you can go into here and you could see that the orders that go out and then get cancelled and then go out and get cancelled and then if I just decide I want to get out, I'll press Ctrl Z and I'm out of the trade. Boom Flat. This video costs me 57 and 28 cents to make.

That's real money but it's fine. So now I have to go and make sure let's see. Oh see, there was still a sell order there so I just go double check that. But I always like to check to make sure there's no working orders because sometimes what a trader will do when they're using active trader they might not realize it.

but you know they might accidentally put you know a buy order like that and then they're like okay good night, I'll see you tomorrow, they leave and uh oh an order was left working. That's an open order and if that stock drops it will fill at 12 bucks and you're going to be surprised the next morning when you log in. So you want to make sure you cancel those open orders, cancel order and you check this before you leave at the end of the day just to make sure you don't have any open orders that are sitting out there. All right.

So now let's go to Setup and let me show you a couple of tricks that, um, will help you get the most out of Tv. Ameritrade. Okay, so you looked at hotkeys. We've looked at order defaults.

Um, now we're going to go. notifications. I turn off these notifications, the order fills. I turn off because I find them distracting.

So I turn this stuff off. I don't use it. The problem is, uh, especially when it's down in these areas. When it pops up, it covers important information.

So I have that turned off always. And then we're gonna go into general. We've got account here. We're gonna go to orders, uh positions.

Let's see, we're gonna go to Active Trader and so uh. I always make sure this is uh, set at zero and I move this one until to recenter faster. Auto send at order, on down, click yes, reset at order template after setting. This is something you may want to turn off.

It depends. I usually turn that off because after I send an order like let's say, I specifically type in an order here for 2500 shares I send it. I might want to click it twice. I don't want it to reset to default of 100 shares.

So I I turn that off on Active trader and then under system. I always want to change the quote speed to real time. No delay. I want to be real time.

No delay. All right. So make sure that's on real time. No delay.

Uh, sound on trading, start stop, I leave that off and then all of this stuff. None of this I have changed. So the most important one uh has been real-time quotes and turning off the reset and making sure your order submission rate uh doesn't have a limit because one of the things that you might want to do if you were, you know I'll just pull up. Um well see I'm trying to think of a a cheap stock.

let's see. So serious. So um so watch this. So I'm going to click this once and I'm going to buy 10 shares and that time I just clicked it four times and now I've got 40 shares.

So the thing here is that I want to be able sometimes to double click right? If I want to do that, I want it to. let me do it. And if you turn the auto submission on this from Active trader, if you move it up, it's going to block you from doing those really quick trades because it's going to think that you know mate, you're like double clicking because you're wanting to click it once, not send two orders. So I understand why they have it.

but you wanna? For me, I wanna make sure that's at zero. All right. So make sure that's at zero, Make sure your system is on real time, no delay and I hope you like the layout. If you install the layout that I have, you know, let me know what you think of it.

If you have some things that you think I could add to it to make it a little bit better, let me know. I'll keep working on it. And if you want to check out a video on how to start, uh, trading. in terms of strategy, one of the simplest strategies that I focus on is leading gainers.

You can check out a video I'm going to put right in the top corner there. I hope you enjoy it and I'll see you for the next episode right here?.