onlyjava 12 Posted April 8 (edited) I made the switch from DAS back to thinkorswim (tos) - here are some observations that might be of help to traders who are comparing DAS to thinkorswim SIMULATOR DAS simulator is probably the best realtime sim out there. TOS Papermoney (simulator) - the fills are really bad - it is counter intuitive - you would think that the fills would be super fast because it is a sim - but not. so I quickly switched from TOS sim to TOS live and started trading with a very small number shares - early on in my learning process. HOT KEYS TOS does not have elaborate hot keys like das - I made the switch - I use active trader on TOS like most TOS traders do - check out this video for the limited hotkey setup for TOS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKDoAFafN78 CAMARILLA DAS has built in CAMARILLA pivots You can script CAMARILLA pivots on TOS https://usethinkscript.com/threads/camarilla-pivot-points-day-trading-system-for-thinkorswim.12988/ LEVEL 2 DAS has really good level 2 - you can pay more and expand it to ARCA and IEX TOS level 2 is a joke compared to DAS TIME AND SALES DAS has really good T&S TOS T&S is decent - I have compared with DAS and found that DAS order flow is smoother - but TOS T&S works OK. COST DAS $150 per month min platform fee + the charges from your broker for transactions TOS FREE platform + FREE transaction fees for stocks - if you have a Schwab account - you can create a Schwab account with with very little money options cost $0.65 per contract per transaction FILLS DAS fills are considered superior than tos. TOS fills are decent from my experience - there are studies that show that TOS fills are fast. to me the fills are super fast sometimes and decent most of the time. WORKS ON A MAC DAS windows primarily - can make it work on a Mac with parallels TOS works on Mac, Windows, Linux out of the box CHARTS & TOOLS DAS look and feel of DAS is dated - like a 20 year old windows 95 application - configuring the charts with multiple windows is a struggle and unexpected craziness can happen with your layout. But essential chart studies are available on DAS. Options trading on DAS is available but not as good as the TOS interface. DAS has limited stock scanning capability. TOS excels with charts, layout, chart studies (countless). I was able to replicate all the studies that I had on my DAS charts on TOS - most of them included with the TOS platform - others with a little bit of scripting. Link to Camarilla pivots script above. TOS also has extensive analysis tools, news and fundamentals info. TOS has a very sophisticated stock/options scanning interface with the ability to convert your scans into watchlists that update automatically. Overall, TOS wins. Edited April 8 by onlyjava Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tashtech 0 Posted April 18 Thanks for your write-up. I am in the process of switching from TOS to IKBR (trader workstation). So far TWS is horrible. My reason for moving from TOS are fill execution and price move, but if its a steep learning curve at IBKR then I might just stay with TOS. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
