Options A to Z - Placing Buy & Sell Orders in Think or Swim

A mini tutorial on placing equity buy and sell orders in Think or Swim (TOS) -- the industry's most powerful option trading software!

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Howto & Style

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• options education
• think or swim
• bill johnson
• tos
• think or swim tutorials
• think or swim training
• tos tutorials
• tos training

[Jamieboogiespencer]

Hi, I've been a long term Scott Trade Customer. There is really one trade that I would like to see ST offer and its a naked Put. I trade INTC quite a bit and would very much like to Sell puts each and every month. However the site tells me this is not allowed. Can you help?

[optionsatoz]

Many brokers do not allow naked put selling but you may wish to check. It may be an approval process you must go through. If they do not allow it, you could use covered calls since they are synthetically identical to selling puts. Although not as efficient, they have an identical payoff structure. That's because buying stock today with the obligation to sell (covered call) is the same as accepting an obligation today to buy shares in the future (naked put).

[optionsatoz]

Type your stock ticker symbol into the quote box on the Trade Tab. Next, click the "bid" price, which generates a sell order template (which will be highligted in red at bottom of your screen.) On that red line, you'll see a column marked "order." Click on the drop-down menu and select LIMIT. Next, type your limit price of $1.89 in the "price" field. Select GTC from TIF menu (time in force) if you want the oder to be good-til-canceled.

[YouBDub]

I think I did this a while back but when I placed the order, my shares were sold right away even do the price was not near my sell limit price.

Also can I do this with the active trader screen? (trade tab, then active trader, type stock symbol and show active trader) I want to just click in the price and generate my sell order that way (the one you mentioned above). AS well as I want to see my sell order in the chart, can I do that?

[optionsatoz]

As long as the limit order is *above* the current market price, the shares will not be sold immediately. So if the current price is $1.70 and you place an order to sell for $1.85, the order will not fill unless TOS can get $1.85 or higher. Yes, you can do this in the active trader trab but you must click on the "ask" column to generate the sell order.

[CreedChrist]

hi i just transfered from etrade to TOS and I saw that there is no "sell short" "buy to cover" option on the pull down menu. It just has "sell" or "buy". How does one short stocks with this software?

[optionsatoz]

To short stocks in TOS, you just click on the bid and place a sell order. If you do not own the shares, TOS assumes it is a short sale.

TOS does this for speed. If you buy 100 shares of IBM and wish to go short 100 shares, you just need to enter ONE order to sell 200 shares.

However, if you are required to "sell short" as with most brokers, you would have to sell 100 shares then place a second order to sell short. 100 shares. That's 2 bid-ask spreads and 2 commissions.

[kotapaka]

@Jamieboogiespencer OptionsHouse does them I think.

[MrPromotionz]

Great Video!!!

[zstrizzel]

@Jamieboogiespencer hope you stopped shorting intel, GPU-integrated tri-gate is the end of ARM, AMD and Nvidia

[zstrizzel]

@Jamieboogiespencer hope you stopped shorting intel, GPU-integrated tri-gate is the end of ARM, AMD and Nvidia

[WaterReignFire]

Hi, can someone show Me how to set up pair trading on the TOS demo platform..what TA studies I need?

[TeraStellar]

Black screens are always hard to read.

[Lavenderrose73]

Hi, I'm new to the market (just started doing this this summer) and after hearing a professional investor say he uses Think or Swim I figured it must be reputable enough so I started an account. I started looking around with the paper money (thank goodness) and the place looked like a bloomin' labyrinth! I appreiate that there are videos that will illustrate how to do these things I'm trying to figure out. I'm saving this to my Understanding Options playlist so I can find your channel again.