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. The SIM is just an account like a live account - You just switch the account to the one you want to trade in. Between SIM and live - it will feel exactly the same experience. 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. To switch from Live to Papermoney you will have to restart TOS. 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/ i have compared DAS vs TOS cams (based on the script linked above) and they match very closely for stocks - (for futures they may not - read the explanation here https://usethinkscript.com/threads/camarilla-pivot-points-day-trading-system-for-thinkorswim.12988/ ) i use tos - i have separate charts plotting cams with/without premarket data and choose the one like @thor explains in this video https://youtu.be/1O5G4rhIJRA?si=fMhtqFD2hqhc6Hdx The gist is that - look at cams w/wo premarket data before the market opens and based on alignment choose the one that fits better. 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 CPU, RAM REQUIREMENTS DAS is light on cpu and ram resources - so any off the shelf windows laptop with 16G of ram will be plenty. However, if you want to connect multiple monitors or broadcast like the moderators, then you need a dedicated graphics card and more RAM. TOS is a beast when it comes to CPU and RAM usage. Get the latest CPU and as much RAM as you can afford. A MAC with a M3 chip and 24 or 36G RAM is what I would use as my TOS machine, if I were to buy one today. 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. also CNBC TV (with about 40 sec lag) 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 August 20 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
