Thinkorswim Chart Setup and Customization Guide

To set up a thinkorswim chart, start by selecting the chart type that best suits your trading style. Thinkorswim offers a variety of chart types, including candlestick, line, and mountain charts.

Thinkorswim charts can be customized to display a range of data, including time intervals, moving averages, and Bollinger Bands. For example, you can add a 50-period moving average to your chart to help identify trends.

To customize your chart, click on the "Indicators" tab and select from a range of built-in indicators, including RSI, MACD, and Stochastic Oscillator. You can also add custom indicators using the "Edit Indicators" feature.

By customizing your chart, you can gain a deeper understanding of market trends and make more informed trading decisions.

For another approach, see: How to Add Indicators on Thinkorswim

To get started with chart setup on thinkorswim, let's cover the basics. Maximizing a cell from a grid layout and rotating through the others in the top right can be a huge time-saver.

You can also create shortcuts to any chart settings through the little pop out arrow next to the menu items. This will give you quick access to frequently used settings.

Loading styles to the pinned tool bar that shows up in chart windows is another convenient feature. This allows you to easily switch between different layouts and settings.

Broaden your view: Thinkorswim Alert Settings

General Settings are an essential part of chart setup, allowing you to tailor your experience to your needs.

You can overlap volume, which can be a game-changer for traders who want to see multiple data points at once.

Synchronizing cross hairs is also a useful feature, enabling you to align multiple charts with ease.

Enabling a logarithmic scale can be particularly helpful for analyzing price movements over long periods of time.

Showing price as a percentage can provide a clearer view of price fluctuations.

Customizing any time frame that shows up in the drop down can save you time and effort in the long run.

Showing pre-market and post-market data can give you a more complete picture of market activity.

A fresh viewpoint: Market Sentiment Chart

To start fresh with your Think or Swim setup, begin by resetting the platform to its default workspace. This is the ultimate reset, and it's a great way to start from scratch.

We're talking about building a default workspace from the ground up. This means our charts will be set to the factory default, giving us a clean slate to work with.

Making your charts look better on the eye is the first order of business after resetting the platform.

Intriguing read: Tradestation Charting

Customizing charts is a crucial step in setting up your thinkorswim chart setup. To change the appearance of your candlestick chart, click on the gear icon in the top blue bar in a chart window.

You can change the candle stick colors, background, volume color, and grid in the background from the appearance tab. This allows you to tailor the look of your chart to your preferences.

To give yourself more space to the right of the chart, you can add some expansion area. This is useful for forecasting price movements and getting a better view of the chart.

You can access the appearance settings by clicking on the gear icon in the top blue bar in a chart window.

From there, you can move to the appearance tab and change the candle stick colors in the platform. You can also change the background of your charts as well as the volume color or grid in the background.

Adding some expansion area to the right of the chart is useful when trying to forecast where price may be headed in the future.

You can get rid of any extra lines on your daily chart like expiration lines, year marking lines, or roll over lines (which show up only on intra day charts).

For your interest: Thinkorswim Charting

To create an efficient chart layout, you can use ThinkorSwim's grid features. ThinkorSwim offers two main grids: a standard 4×8 and a flex grid that allows for nearly unlimited windows to be generated.

You can populate the grid with tickers from watchlists through the load symbols to cells feature, making it easy to organize and view multiple charts at once. This feature is especially useful when tracking multiple stocks or assets.

To save your custom grid layout, click on "Save as set" at the bottom right of the edit window and give it a name that's relevant and recognizable to you. This way, you can easily access and reuse your favorite layouts.

You can also link charts in the grid so that they're all the same, making it easy to compare and analyze different data points. This feature is particularly useful when looking for patterns or trends across multiple charts.

By using ThinkorSwim's grid features and shortcuts, you can create an efficient chart layout that saves you time and effort. With a little practice, you'll be able to customize your charts to suit your trading style and preferences.

If this caught your attention, see: Thinkorswim Same Chart Layout

To set up a multi-chart layout with indicators, start by right-clicking on the chart and hovering over "Studies" to navigate to "Edit studies." You can also access this feature by clicking on "Studies" with a beaker symbol next to it at the top right of your screen.

Take a look at this: Thinkorswim Studies

Thinkorswim's platform has a lot of indicators, and depending on how many you use, you might want to set up a multi-chart layout to spread them out. This will allow you to organize your charts more efficiently.

To add a study or strategy to your chart, type its name in the top left area of the screen and double-click on it to populate it to the right. Different indicators will have different customizable settings and options to adjust.

If you want to save your study set so you can use it on any chart in the future, click on "Save as set" at the bottom right of the edit window and give it a name that's relevant and recognizable to you. This way, you can easily access and apply your saved settings.

You can also link multiple charts together by clicking on the link icon next to the ticker symbol window and making sure they're both populated with the same settings. This will allow you to synchronize your charts and view the same data on multiple screens.

A different take: Thinkorswim Volume Indicators

You can customize any time frame that shows up in the drop down.

This flexibility is a game-changer, allowing you to tailor your chart to your specific trading needs.

For example, you can easily switch between a 1-minute chart and a 1-hour chart, or even a daily chart.

Customizing your time frame is one of the most important settings you can adjust. You can choose from a wide range of time frames that show up in the dropdown.

The ability to customize any time frame that shows up in the dropdown is a powerful feature. This allows you to tailor your view to suit your trading style and preferences.

You can adjust the time frame to suit your needs, whether you're a day trader or a long-term investor.

Saving a customized chart as a default is a great way to streamline your workflow. You can save it as a style and call it something generic, like "default black stock chart".

Customizing your chart to your liking takes time and effort, but it's worth it to have it just the way you want it. Once you've saved your style, you can then save it as a chart default.

To save a style as a chart default, you'll need to go to the style menu and apply the style to any chart window you have open. This way, you can easily access your customized default chart.

You can also customize the chart back to factory default if you need to. This is a great option if you want to start from scratch or if you're working with a different type of data.

You can access advanced settings in the thinkorswim chart setup by clicking on the "Edit" button in the top right corner of the chart.

Thinkorswim offers a range of advanced indicators, including Bollinger Bands, which can be found in the "Indicators" tab.

Check this out: Indicators for Thinkorswim

To add a Bollinger Band to your chart, click on the "Indicators" tab and select "Bollinger Bands" from the list.

The Bollinger Band settings can be adjusted to suit your trading needs, with options including the number of periods and the standard deviation.

The "Format" tab allows you to customize the appearance of your chart, including the colors and fonts used.

You can also use the "Format" tab to adjust the chart's layout, including the number of price scales and the display of technical indicators.

The "Alerts" tab allows you to set up price alerts for specific events, such as when a stock reaches a certain price level.

Thinkorswim also offers a range of other advanced features, including the ability to create custom indicators and scripts.