Wondering what "cloud hosting" means and whether our trading tool thinkorswim® uses it? Find out the answer on Ask the Geek only at TD Ameritrade.
Hey Geek, here’s a two-part question: What’s the cloud, and does thinkorswim® live in it?
And part two’s answer: Yes! For longer than the term “cloud” has been around, we’ve been storing settings, running
thinkScripts, calculating implied volatility, and routing your orders on our own cloud.
We recently introduced cloud-hosted drawings. So, every time you add a drawing or modify it on any chart, it’s instantly stored (well, nothing is instant, but it is super fast). If you close down thinkorswim at home and open it up at work, all those chart annotations you made at home will be on your charts. All the drawings are saved to a drawing set (you can have different drawing sets and quickly switch among them). And coming soon, we’re going to tap in to the power of the thinkorswim cloud and add all of your drawings and annotations into thinkorswim Mobile, so all changes to your charts will be available quickly and everywhere.
It’s not exactly related to the topic of the cloud, but another new feature of note is the new thinkorswim Home tab. This is a place on the platform that is uniquely yours. You can check in each time you log in and see portfolio performance, upcoming market events, orders status, and much more. We wanted to create a place where you can rest the software while you are between trades. We were also able to include features that help you react quickly to news or information.
FIGURE 1: THINKORSWIM HOME TAB.
None of the items contained within the above image are intended to be a recommendation.
The main part of the Home tab is made up of a group of customizable widgets. There are four categories: My Account & Portfolio, Market Data, Time & Calendar, and thinkorswim information. The widgets themselves are made of different monitoring tools. For example, you can bring up a chart of your account value versus a benchmark and next to that keep track of the current phase of the moon.
The other half of the Home tab is reserved for updates coming from social media, live news videos, and the thinkorswim Trade Desk. This is where you can stay in tune with the ever-updating news, wherever it may come from. This is also where you can check to see if there’s a live education event in your neighborhood.
The main focus of the Home tab is that it is unique to you. You can customize this page to meet your needs. You can check in for a quick update, or spend most of your thinkorswim time here.