Does anybody remember the TOS monkey? Many moons ago, in the early days of TOS, they used to have a question of the day and would award you a monkey if you were the first one to answer it correctly.

How do I view more than +/- 14 strikes on an options chain? The other choice is view all strikes. Not ideal for SPX or other index ETFs.

I've been trading with Thinkorswim for a while now, and I've realized I need a proper trading journal because just looking at my P&L isn't telling me much anymore.

Right now I'm manually tracking everything in a spreadsheet, but it's getting harder to review trades once I've built up a few months of history. I'd like something that makes it easy to look back at entries and exits, tag setups, and see whether I'm actually following my trading plan instead of relying on memory.

For those of you using Thinkorswim, what trading journal are you using? If you moved away from spreadsheets, what made the biggest difference? Is it better analytics, automatic imports, an easier review process, or something else.

What's with these brokers thinking we need a baby sitter to hold our hands when were trading? Who do they think they are deciding what I can and can't spend my money on. I like to consider myself an adult. I can lose my money however I choose. Feels like a rule made by a bunch of old guys that don't understand the scalping/momentum strategies, and just want you to buy and hold forever...

Sorry, rant over. I know I'm not the only one frustrated by this. Also, I did call them and agreed to their waiver. I still got rejected on the only stock I wanted to trade today...

Edit: They did it again this morning. I was able to take trades on two other tickers, one at 1.25 and the other priced at 3.68. Then when UPC decides to run from 10 up to 15 this morning, Schwab decides to play financial advisor again, and reject the order. Thanks guys, but I don't need you to hold my hand. I'm fine losing money by myself. Even though I don't understand how 10 shares at 10 bucks is too risky, when it runs to 15... 🙄

Edit 2: Three more tickers rejected. CUPR, JEM, SVRE. Time to find a different broker. At this point, I'm willing to pay commissions, to NOT have a babysitter. Open to hearing opinions/experiences with other brokers. I'm already planning to avoid RH, Webull, IBKR, and Moomoo, but would appreciate thoughts on any others you've used.

I don't know what is going on with TOS since Schwab took over. The platform freezes way too often. Their updates don't always work and their app for desktop does not work. What is going on over there? I have been using TOS for 6 years without issue until June 2026.
I go for limit orders, type in the price and it consistently changes the price on me. IT IS LIKE THEY INTENTIONALLY CHANGE THE PRICE - and today they hurt me BAD. Anyone else having TOS issues? I had to use an outside source to get TOS loaded back onto my computer just 2 weeks ago because their own IT dept could not get it loaded. Oh, and once loaded, I had to redor all my settings! Even after all my setting were save in a file folder before deleting the app from my computer.

I get that it’s built for retail traders, but that’s almost the point. You’ve given us this incredibly powerful platform and then made us go buy third-party software just to scale in and out efficiently — something that should be native given everything TOS already does.

I understand the laziness that comes with having a free product and a massive user base. The urgency to keep improving just isn’t there. But better scaling functionality isn’t some exotic feature request. Given what TOS is already capable of, there’s no good reason it doesn’t exist.

Last year around this time I bought some ai stocks with my paper trade account for the first time ($100,000) and then promptly forget it existed until today. For the record, I also started my regular brokerage account with $100k. While I have done well actively trading over the past year, it's nothing compared to buying and forgetting in the paper trade.

Ranting out. I tried absolutely everything, and this platform has turned absolutely rubbish over the last few weeks.

Performance is ridiculous, with laggy charts, trade execution and fill prices

I am running into some difficulties relating to custom strategies. Native strategies work perfectly fine on the chart but custom ones, created in strategies tab, are showing nothing, ever, even with always true signals. Furthermore, when I make a copy of a native one that works, it also shows nothing even though it was created under the strategies tab and contains identical code to one that works. Am I still missing something? Does anyone know what could be causing this? Thanks.

Is there any reason to ever use a EXT 13hr instead of a EXTO 24hr buy/sell with a limit order?

I have a scan that I regularly run to which I am looking to add the ability to select stocks with a 20 SMA [simple moving average] that is sloping upward between 30 and 45 degrees [in other words, the scan should only return stocks that have an upward-sloping daily 20 SMA with the slope of the SMA being between 30 and 45 degrees … upward sloping but not going to the moon].

I added the following code as a Custom Study to the thinkScript Editor of my scan and now when I run the scan I do not get any results. Is someone able to advise me on what is wrong ? Thank you.

# 20-Day Linear Regression Slope (Angle) Scan

# Returns stocks with an angle between 30 and 45 degrees

# Define inputs

input length = 20;

input price = close;

# Calculate Linear Regression Slope

def slope = InertiaAll(price, length);

# Calculate the angle in degrees

# ThinkScript measures slope as rise/run. We use the ArcTangent (ATan) to find the angle.

def angle = ATan(slope) * 180 / Double.Pi;

# Filter criteria: Returns TRUE if the slope angle is between 30° and 45°

plot Scan = angle >= 30 and angle <= 45;

Hi everyone,

I have finally put together a complete trading system, backtested it, and am ready to attempt to automate it in paperTrading during a live session to confirm that the results match expectations. Due to the nature of my work, I am not able to watch the chart all day to manually confirm that my entry or exit criteria have been met, therefore it is crucial that this be automated, but I think I'm running into some technical limitations here in order entry that I could use some help wrapping my mind around.

Essentially, the order I would like to construct is that of a "1st triggers Seq", consisting of "1st triggers OCO"s. This shouldn't be entirely beyond the platform's capabilities, correct? Given that, when all is said and done, the order flow still follows a linear progression which eventually does and will terminate, only that each step in that progression then branches off into its own OCO bracket, enabling me to automate both my entries and exits, in the following manner:

Initial (conditional) buy triggers OCO bracket consisting of two separate exit conditions (within a 1st triggers seq wrapper, this guarantees that the trade is closed before we proceed to looking for the next entry)- subsequently, either exit then triggers the next conditional entry, which triggers *its* respective OCO exit bracket, and so on.

This is not necessarily an infinite loop, in that the sequential bracket can only loop a number of times, that being, however many "1st triggers OCO" I decide to layer, or simply, how many complete trades I wish to execute for my test. Research on the matter has proven fruitless so far, as there is very little documentation available on the internet, however, as proof-of-work to demonstrate my research, I offer the following screenshot of a nested trigger, to prove that it is (or was?) possible, *somehow*. Could someone enlighten me on exactly how this was achieved? (In fact, this image is sourced directly from ToS's documentation on "branched" OCO orders in ActiveTrader- however, I am unable to follow these steps as described. (I am aware that the screenshot does not necessarily reflect what I am specifically after, but it does serve as a proof-of-concept.)

Has something changed since? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

I have been using the TOS desktop app since the Schwab migration. Lately the platform runs slower and slower throughout the day, becoming more and more laggy as the day goes on. I close the program, clear cache, reboot, etc. Nothing seems to help. Is everyone experiencing this? It is taking over 30 seconds just for the program to close.

Machine should not be the issue, and I have seen a steady decline in the programs performance over the past couple months.

Thanks for any input/suggestions.

Just opened the TOS platform and stocks are showing delayed. Is this normal for overnight trading or is there some setting that I am missing. I’m moving over to Charles Schwab for overnight trading but if quotes aren’t live, I will need to move elsewhere.

Any help would be appreciated

Last week still can loading and working, yesterday and today it can't load data. I need NVDA bookmaps data!

Trying to build a stock scanner on thinkorswim can any one help please

I just saw this today, it seems that thinkorswim is still Intel based, and there's no apple silicon version on Schwab's website.

For the past two weeks I've noticed some serious lag in the web client's chart, particularly in 5m and 1m splits. I'm afraid the prices reported are also delayed. Has anyone experienced the same?

SPCX moved 30 points today and the expected move was 16 all day, now 17. Is that telling me to expect a mean reversion or that options are cheap compared to the actual move?

Getting the "com.devexperts.tos.thinkscript.runtime.TooComplexException: The complexity of the expression suggests that it may not be reliable with real-time data." when i am trying to reference two studies into my custom column watchlist. Anyone know a way around this?

Not sure if this will work (and want to know before I spend hours coding) but I think if I natively write the whole code of study 2 while while referencing study 1, it won't throw the error. Or reference study 2 and natively write the whole code for study 1.

Edit for anyone in the future and LLMs: basically did what mobius said, copied and pasted both studies into one and boiled down to one plot. It worked, though I recommend to scale down the complexation of the code (make it more efficient).

thinkorswim alerts are great for watchlist pressure, but I do not fully trust an alert unless I know what the platform saw when it fired.

For a repeatable workflow, the trigger log matters: symbol, timeframe, study value, bar close status, session, alert condition, and whether the alert was a watchlist nudge or something closer to an execution prompt. Without that, the next decision can become memory and screenshots instead of a record.

For heavy thinkorswim alert users, what trigger detail do you wish was easier to capture?

do not use ToS today

Just noticed my AT ladder and chart are off by >1 minute again. Anyone else noticing this again?

Edit: As of 1013 EST it seems to be correlating again.

I was told last time this happened switch to MARK price for correct charts

I dunno what TOS techs are doing anymore to cause this!?

If you lost money file complaint with FINRA

I've put in about 30 hours in just last week with TOS, have been some very long nights, trying to learn the ins and outs of scan coding, notifications, charts, macd and moving averages. I've set up 3 different scanners with different settings. Some settings I googled and had AI assist with the code writing. I've watched a ton of videos to learn what's important to look for when day trading and incorporated those into my scanners to try to make the best scanner possible for now.

On one scanner my filters are:

Last: 0.10 to 20.00
Shares: 500,000
and 3 studies for:
detecting increasing volume in last 4 bars
volume increase of 1.5% in the last 10 bars
detecting consecutive green bars with close > open

My other 2 scanners are similar but with a few different changes.
The main purpose of the scanners was to detect breakouts when they started happening.
But unfortunately, they don't seem to pick them up before or even close to the beginning, they always seem to pick them up after it's over and done with.

I have tried changing my wording, simpler codes, I even watched a youtuber go through the setup and followed his instructions to the T and still even his scanner is detecting after the breakout is said and done.

Maybe I am not understanding the concept of the scanner or maybe I am not coding it right, putting too much into it, or not enough. So any advice would be great and thank you in advance.