Thinkorswim Broker Review

Lot of bells and whistles, but they mean nothing if the data feed lags and freezes. The indicator is only as good as the data it gets. Some bad data from time to time should be expected, but this is an ongoing issue at TDA/TOS. The platform was down for a 5 day stretch several months ago and issues still have not been corrected.

TOS is not made for daytraders, forget them if you want to daytrade. If you are taking positions once in a while, or you swing trade they might be good for you. Their datafeed is bad and slow. Their rates are insanely high. But, they have a great options trading platform. If you trade options once in a while they are great. For the rest: forget them.

Frequent server issues.When this happens, charts are out of sync with Bid/Ask or screen freezes for example. Makes day trading impossible-Like working with delayed quotes. There are some nice features but reliability is not there.

A good all around platform for daytrading options.

I'll not reiterate the prior posting/evaluation ... but rather just speak to how I've come to know Thinkorswim through TD Ameritrade.

I recently forced myself to become acquainted with Thinkorswim once TD Ameritrade bought them … since I had an account with TD Ameritrade. Just as background, I trade primarily stocks but also emini contracts on a few indices and also options on both futures and stocks.

My prior experience with software is with Tradestation (since the 90’s), Cybertrader (before Schwab bought it), TradeCast (before they went defunct), Realtick, Gr8trade, and a few other direct access trading platforms.

TD Ameritrade’s Thinkorswim currently is only for equities and options and they have plans for futures and forex “soon” … but don’t know what soon is. So I’ve only executed stock and options trades. The executions I’ve had were all spot on.

I’m just trying to get used to the format which is supposedly intuitive … but takes a lot of time to learn and find out all of the tools available within the software. Compared to a Tradestation, the charting feels limited to an extent and not as user friendly from an “analytics” standpoint. To truly understand and plumb the depths of the program will take time and likely many “educational videos” which are not very in-depth … and are currently limited in terms of topics covered. They also offer online training sessions – but I’ve not logged in to any yet as the initial feedback has been that it’s targeted to the basics and lowest common denominator of a TD Ameritrade “investor” crowd.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that the quotes come through in bursts every 1 or 2 seconds it seems. At least that’s my perception compared to other real time flow of quotes.

There’s tons of option analytics available for option traders. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that it was initially crafted for options. Otherwise, it has some pattern recognition screening and tons of typical technical analysis tools and indicators as well as some beyond the typical. Also, I recently discovered the Volume at Price vertical component that has been a bridge into the arena of Market Profile type presentation on the charts.

I can say that the platform has never crashed or locked up (which I find strange but cool). Anyway, that’s all I’ve got so far. I’ll post more as I learn more of its capabilities … and I’m still looking forward to the futures capabilities and seeing what the apparent quote bursts do and how they affect reading the level 2, DOM-type quotes and charts … and where my executions go off at.

1. Excellent charts, but periodicity and historical data is limited to what TOS provides.
2. Low commissions for stocks / options; high commissions for futures unless one trades high volume of contracts.
3. TOS keeps adding new features frequently.
4. Has ability for custom coding using Thinkscript, but there are limitations to Thinkscript.
5. Very good customer service / technical support (including response to questions relating to Thinkscript).
6. Has ability for on-demand replay of past data (tick data is not available though).
7. Can simulate trading using a "paper-trading" account.