The stock markets have lots of activity every single trading day. These tools can help you stay on top of what's happening in the stock markets: Options Time & Sales and Active Trader.
There’s never a dull moment. The markets are a buzz of activity every single trading day. Keep yourself in the loop with these tools.
Seeing time, price, and volume data for every options transaction of an actively traded stock can be a lot of information to digest. The data is changing continuously—too fast to keep track of. Maybe the only thing you can figure out is if you see a lot of red, there’s likely a lot of selling going on and if you see a lot of green, it could mean there’s a lot of buying. But beyond that, how could you use that information to make trading decisions?
Ideally, you’ll want to filter all that data and focus on what matters to you. The Options Time & Sales tool on the thinkorswim® platform from TD Ameritrade gives you that ability.
There are two ways to view the Options Time & Sales feature—on the main screen and in the left sidebar. Let’s focus on the features on the main screen. If you look at the Analyze or Trade tab, there are many sections on display. Make sure to select the Options Time & Sales box; the Options Time & Sales section will appear below Today’s Options Statistics (see figure 1).
To the right of Condition is a gear icon that allows you to select the number of trades to display in the Today’s Biggest category. If you see a big trade show up and want to learn more about it, select the menu on the right side of the row and choose to analyze the trade in more detail.
If you trade actively, the Active Trader tab on the thinkorswim platform could be for you (see figure 2). You’ll find a listing of prices, and you can place orders with one click or move orders to different price points by dragging your cursor. From the Trade tab, select the Active Trader button. The default layout displays a chart on the left side and depth of market and order actions on the right. The layout is customizable. To the right of the Active Trader panel is the control bar with buttons that range from live news feeds to additional sets of order buttons. The beauty of the Active Trader tab is its visual approach to placing orders.