Paper trading ideas on TOS

[justinstrommer9 18]

Using TD Ameritrade free Think Or Swim platform offers an awesome “On Demand” tool that lets you practice trading at anytime of the day with historical data.   You choose any date and time in the past that you want to trade. Great way to practice the open and identifying opening range breakouts.  I like to choose a day and trade the first hour. This will give you lots of experience.  Also, if you go into the results section on bearbulls website you can find what stocks Andrew was trading on any given day, so you can go back in time and practice the stocks in play that he was trading that day.  This is a great time to practice identifying setups and nailing down your execution.   

One last note: TOS platform lacks the hotkeys needed for Andrews style of trading, but I have found a way around this.  You can setup multiple  trade buttons that act as your hot keys. Let’s say you buy 500 shares. Than you will also have three other buttons ready to take profit like a hot key. 

Sell Button 1: 125 (1/4 position)

Sell button 2: 375 (3/4 position) 

sell button 3: 250 (1/2 position) 

you have these buttons so you don’t have to retype the share amount in TOS trade window(that would be to slow and you would miss the move)   This gives you different ways to exit a trade quickly like you would in the DAS Platform. It’s been working for me well and I have also incorpaorated a system to apply my stops.  In the photo you can see I have a separate side for going long and short, I did this so I would not mix up my exit buttons and would execute faster  

 

 

[justinstrommer9 18]

For stop loss, it will not automatically change your stop loss amount when you take partial profit. So I hit a cancel button. Which cancels my original stop. And than I enter my new stop amount and place that at break even In The active trader window.  This is the only thing you will need to type in unless you are using mental stop losses. 

Edited February 11, 2019 by justinstrommer9

[Brian 1]

Great idea. I also use TOS paper. I have been trying to figure out how to get the active trader buttons set up. I will try this.

[justinstrommer9 18]

Here is a better photo and an updated version.  I brought the too sides together for long and shorts to save space.  It seems to be working out for me.  I often use the Active trader ladder to move my stops and set targets.  When I enter  each order I use the template selector to choose what size of stop I want to use.  I have saved presets for stops, from .10 -.40 depending on share size and levels.  I will probably add a 125 shares button for taking partials when buying 250 shares.  As I take partials I create a new stop order for the left over shares and place it with the active trader window, its not ideal, but seems to be the best way to do it so far.  Another thing is when you are trading a stock that has no shares for short, you cannot place a buy and stop order at the same time, which is annoying.  This means if you have a stop in place, you must cancel it before taking profit (buy order) or it will be declined.  This is because you would have more sell orders in place (stop plus you target) than you purchased.  If both orders where hit than you would be short, but no shorts available, so that's why.   Hope the makes sense.  I am not fully committed to TOS yet and may consider DAS in the future, but this is good for now as I practice for free reading charts, patterns, etc.

[Brian 1]

Great. Thank you for sharing that. 

I have been trying to figure out how to use active trader. Just recently I fled TD Ameritrade to try and figure out if I could program the quantity buttons to calculate the share size based off of risk tolerance and stop size. Unfortunately it doesn't appear that we can do that. Which is to bad because that kind of control would be nice and not that hard to implement. I hadn't thought to open multiple sets of buttons as you have done. That could work.

In regards to the problem with stocks that can't be shorted, there is a "flatten" button I just discovered. It cancels all orders and closes the position in one click. I think it places a market order though. 

Also, TOS has got keys. But I haven't really looked at those yet. Not real comfortable with that. Afraid of hitting the wrong key.

So far I like TOS overall. It's nice that it is free. And has a lot of capabilities. I've also recieved great customer service so far. I was able to get them to drop commissions a bit, down to $4.95, just by calling in and asking.