It always seems to happen w/practice

As I mentioned in the past I have been struggling a bit with entering and existing option trades in TS. I finally had a conversation with someone over the weekend that told me what I was doing wrong. Since then I have been practicing to make sure I can easily enter and exit at will - basics 101. Fast forward to Wednesday at 3:55PM I see that CELG 89/144 have turned over indicating a potential pop this a.m. 233 is sitting nicely on the BBB with indicators low, bands squeezing suggesting a volatility breakout. Weekly trend is still up with a bit of room to go indicating up will continue. Entered around 3:57 in TS practice account heading into the close. This morning company announces a stock split, up almost $7 bucks going into the close today , and I am sitting on a great practice trade that should have been real money except for the fact that I was not comfortable that I could easily exit (if needed) until today. Oh well, maybe next time...

I don't even like practicing with them. But that is what I need to do as well. I try not to wonder how they can't get their act together like think or swim and have an easy platform for options. I still have 1/2 my money with think or swim and still tend to trade with them even though it is cheaper with tradestation. Now I absolutely love their platform for the charts. No complaints there at all. I keep thinking I can't believe I get these charts for basically free. But oh as you say placing a trade is a totally different story. One basic question...how do you move from stock to stock without using the mouse on TS? I was out of town a lot and now am using it and can't find that on the forums. I know I read that somewhere but I can't remember. With Q it was just the enter key...Thanks shannon

Easy answer first... In TS the "Enter" key will allow you to tab down through your symbols when reviewing your basket. I used the "Space Bar" in QCharts.

As for actual trading with TS I would suggest practicing entering/exiting using the platform until you have a comfort level. There are three fundamental tasks I had to work through:

1) Being able to find an option chain similar to other platforms. Your can order through the on screen Order Bar but I did not like the layout of the option chains. I now use Option Station Pro and keep it minimized so that I can access whenever I need.

2) Placing a trade. This was my first big obstacle in Option Statin Pro. Once I realized that I needed to create a theoretical position before placing an order it became relatively easy. <Type in symbol, locate option chain, drag/drop option into theoretical window, click on trade, confirm trade>

3Closing the trade. I agree with your original comments about a month ago that it was hard to manage and view my positions once in. Thanks to Chunk's suggestion I now have a separate workspace/window set up that I can access at will. This workspace/window contains a personalized/modified version of TradeManger. I can view the performance of my position at will with the click of a mouse. My problem was that I could not figure out how to exit without going back to Option Station Pro. I kept right clicking the position in Trade Manager requesting to sell the position to no avail. Someone told me this past weekend that I had probably locked the Order Bar inadvertently. My sell position would populate but the "Sell" button was grayed out not allowing me to execute. I spent 20 minutes at work one day with my door closed trying to figure out how in the heck to sell a position without going back to Option Station Pro. Once I unlocked the Order Bar everything became relatively seamless.

Now that I have a process and comfortable with the functionality it's not that bad but it still takes a few additional mouse clicks and using three different tools to enter, view/manage, and exit a trade. When I factor in having to go to another broker website and logging in then it takes about the same amount of time either way.

Hope that helps!

NCT



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2014 06:15AM by NCTrader.

I'd like to add a touch of info concerning practice trades using the Think Or Swim platform. I've learned these things over the past couple months or so.

1. You can run the Paper Money side and the Live Trading side of Think Or Swim at the same time. Just login to one of them, and then click the desktop icon again to log into the other one. Very simple.

2. IF your account is NOT funded with TOS your paper trading side will be delayed up to 20 minutes. Your P/L numbers will be real time, and so will the charts, but all of the price quotes and options data are delayed up to 20 minutes. I only use daily and 233 charts, and it has been an issue in the past for me. I know it will certainly be a major pain for those of you that practice trade on much smaller time frames.

3. IF you fund the account with any "tradeable" amount (say 50 bucks or so) then you can have everything real time on the Paper Money side as well. BUT you have to call them and let them know you want "Real Time" on the Paper Money side, as it is not automatic. At least not according to tech support. That also applies to their phone apps.

There are NO requirements to ever fund your TOS account, and if you choose to fund it, I'm told there are no fees that would slowly drain you account while you are practicing. Basically the 50 bucks will just sit there waiting for you to add to it while collecting dust. Or you could even use it trade very low priced stocks and options:-) I.E. penny stocks :-)

Thanks for the insight RR! Based on the information above, your previous posts with helping Dan set up TOS, and the information Robert has provided I think I can now successfully create my TOS workspace as a backup to TS. This has been on my list for quite some time but every time I get close to finishing I get so frustrated with TOS. I think I can use the one basic workspace Robert provided a few months back as a start. No fancy stuff. Just the basic four indicators set up we all know. Always best to have a backup plan in case something happens with TS. You can't beat the price of TOS and have I have been an established customer with TDA for years.

All of that said you cannot beat TS platform with respect to community support, pure charting ability, coding flexibility, and history. You can get what you need as some here have done for as little as $10 per month to cover data fees. To be honest $50 per month to get most of the data any of us could ever want is well worth the price compared to $200-$250 for QC and the their issues. Far superior product compared to QC. The programmers out there will love TS as the new platform with recent object oriented programming enhancements to their Easy Language has been described as a complete programming language on par with C+ or C#. I do not know about that as I am not an expert in that area but it is impressive. For those like me that are not programmers by trade it is still fun to overcome the challenge and create something from scratch. It just takes a bit of time to figure it all out and a lot of reading. With all the bells and whistles you would think that making and managing simple option trades would be a bit more streamlined. Oh well....

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

NCB

Hi NCt

We're all learning the nuances of TS. On OptionStation Pro, I click Natural to populate the current price as a Limit.

Have you been noticing that sometimes your sell position doesn't get filled even when you're up-a-buck on your practice? I called TS and they said this can happen often in simulation, but less likely when real.

(On a side note, I've started using a lime green on my cross indicators. I can appreciate the contrast better. Candles are much better overlapping thanks to you.)

Chunk