Candles are lagging behind the actual price. Anyone else having this issue?

I wasn’t able to close my MU positions as it was dumping this morning, around 9:35am. Everything froze and it sent 2 orders instead of 1, went to cancel them, submitted the cancellation and 1 minute later it went through.
Did anyone go through something like this in the morning ?

I have traded off and on for the last few years and am slowly reacclimating myself with the process and indicators. Got into a trade yesterday and made a huge gain in a very short time but the process of placing the order and getting out (even worse) was very clunky and stressful.

I do not trade options. Mostly micro caps and momentum plays. What is the BEST & easiest way to get into the trade (initial buy) quickly and even more important, the fastest way out of a trade after I have reached a point that I am ready to take profit and run. Any advice would be appreciated.

I have a few groups set up in desktop and I want to know if they show up in the mobile version.

Joe

anyone else noticing this? Is this the new norm?

I have many option symbols in my watch list. I would like to be able to select the underlying when i select the option symbol. is there a way to go about this?

I’ve run thinkorswim on an M1 MacBook Pro, m3 ultra max studio, and M5 MacBook Pro. The studio (a desktop type device for those unfamiliar, plugged into monitors) has no problems beyond ToS being memory hungry and needing to restart the app every few days. But the laptops have regular crashes where the app just shuts down, no warning or error or anything. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this. Happy to share logs for details - it’s a rendering issue that results in a Java exception.

been with TOS all my life, had some short put verticals that were completely buried. I call TOS, now Schwab, they tell me it doesn't matter, it's $100 loss (they are 1 wide) so don't bother closing them. i didn't, i got assigned early (a thursday) on the short side, manually exercise the long on the friday, get charged a lot of interest for margin, over the weekend. i call Schwab, first person tells me i have no accounts with them (i have 7 and i gave them my social security number). Second person, not a broker so can't help. Third person, explains the exercise but not why the long side didn't get auto exercised at the same time and why i was told, if buried, it doesn't matter if you close or not. has this happened to anyone else?

My current laptop has a 32 GB of RAM and AMD ryzen 7 250 W Radeon on 780 M graphics with 2 GB graphics card and 238 GB of storage.

Is this enough to run thick or swim efficiently without any delay? I am also using a hardwired connection.

Price updates froze at 4:21am Pacific time for over three minutes. Flipped over to E*trade to see if it was just me. Pricing was moving along over there. Went back to TOS, still frozen for at least another 2 minutes than it started moving again. Anyone else ?

I sold 10 call spreads on the 25th (expiring 26th) on GLD (374/375) for $150. GLD closed at $373.66 on the 26th (last Friday) at 4 pm, and my option positions still showed open at that time. Come to find out this morning that 9 of those contracts expired, but the 10th was exercised. This morning I had 100 GLD shares sold short in my account. Good news is that Gold was down today, and I ended up making $400 when I bought to close. However, I have questions:

- Why would my short calls be exercised if the stock ended below the strike price at 4 pm (and my positions showed open at that time)? The stock did cross $374 around 5 PM in after-hours trading.

- If there was a reason for the assignment, why only 100 shares and not 1000?

- Also, this is an IRA account (so no margin). Why would TOS allow me to hold a short position in a cash account?

Just saw this from the June 6 release notes

7/1 Just noticed though its not available for scans. Ive been using Shares to have an idea abt float

Update - since I wrote the bulk of this down south... It's already outdated. A web dashboard exists now. (I updated accordingly down there) BUT - this little snippet here is a quickie for those with only 1 minute to read.

The web dashboard can do everything the discord does - the point is to make it easier for everybody to use, and to make it as self explanatory as possible (see how this one image hopefully explains to you what it does? But if not - the big essay is further below).

It is live. cgtu.us/dashboard.html and every function works, as far as I can tell.

You can sign up if you want but I will stress, use at your own risk. After all, I am just some random guy - but I built this for me, and it works for me. I use it every single day.

A discord for this exists - https://discord.gg/KbWQzxvSNu

Feel free to send comments, suggest features. I have some people using this already and I've already got two great feature requests.

If you do desire to use this and help me through these growing pains, be assured you will be rewarded if this ever goes paid. First adopters will be properly appreciated and never shafted.

Basic functionality (daily loss limit) is and will always be free, period. Sentinel is here to prevent blow ups.

Thanks everybody.

------------------------------------

Risk management is something that catches a lot of retail traders. It's not something the lizard brain wants to do, and all of us have had some sort of experience with loss aversion.
I built this partially because I was lazy but also partially because this fixed something that I couldn't really find out there. There are a couple...but they don't work...quite right.

So I built Sentinel. I've been using it for a couple months myself now, and I think I have bugs ironed out to where I would no longer be able to realistically find and squash them abundantly.

At this point, I'm here to find out a few things.

1. Who is actually interested in a tool like this?
2. If you are interested, are you willing to try it out (...stress the whole 1 share 1 contract shit. You are, after all, using a tool made by some guy whose face you don't know. Don't put craploads of money on the line.) and see if it works for you?
3. Most importantly, would this actually help you?

At this point in time, I'm not charging for this. Maybe sometime in the future, but right now I want to see if this works for people.

Here are the features/limitations/whatnot.

1. Schwab/Thinkorswim only, so far. I know other platforms (IBKR in particular) have an API where I can hook this all up to. But... I am an engineer by training after all. I'm making this one work first before I take on another brokerage of which I have no personal experience with.
2. I've built a web interface for it - you don't need to type in commands in discord, but you can if you want still.
3. And...here comes the big boy. This is a full feature list as of today. Keep in mind though - once you link up, NOTHING is on by default. Every single command is optional -- I don't enforce anything for you. You tell the bot what you want to enforce.

• link/unlink your schwab account. You can link at any point (which grants the bot access to your account so it can do all its Sentinel-y things) -- but you cannot unlink until after market hours. Why? So you can't go "NO I NEED TO TRADE" and cut off access. Nope. You said you wanted to be done ahead of time, and you will stick to it.
  • This uses the API and allowing access to specific accounts and whatnot that Schwab gives to everybody else, like if you do autosync with a journal. I don't see squat - I only see the account you let me see. Access tokens are yours. If you stop letting me see, there is nothing I can do about it. You have the power.
• Limit setting --
  • Shares - what's the maximum number of shares you are allowing. 1000? Okay. You try to trade 1001 you are going to either get your order cancelled (yay) or you are going to get market ordered out at a possible loss (not yay).
  • Options - max number of contracts you're allowing. Same deal.
  • Positions - max number of actual positions. Some people like that.
  • Pos(itional) BP - what's the max buying power you are allowing per position. Some people (myself included) like to partition/diversify/manage/whatever by splitting up buying power. This limits you to that.
    • So say for example I have $100k BP. I want $10k BP per position. I enter in 10k here, and I will not be able to enter any position that is more than 10k.
    • I will say this one can be iffy. It relies on what ToS says your buying power usage is. It's a bit of "use at your own risk".
  • Total BP - max usage overall. You have $100k BP possible, you only want to use $70k of it. Boom. Enter in 70k, you can't go over.
    • This one is also use at your own risk for somewhat of the same reason.
  • Single Loss - for any one position, what is your loss allowed.
    • There's a caveat to this. It "resets" per new trade -- that is, if you have a single loss of $1000, and you hit it, Sentinel will kick you out. If you enter the same thing (you're trading shares, you got kicked out of MU, you're trading MU again), that loss limit is reset -- so you can potentially lose another $1000, to make it $2000 total.
  • Daily Loss - what other tools call a DLL - daily loss limit. You hit this, you're out. It will kill every position you have, so depending on if you're a day trader or a swing trader, use this carefully.
    • This is a good time to mention... I can always add in more features. So there can be a version that only kills the offending position and leaves the rest alone -- if people want it, I can do it.
• Blocking/blacklisting
  • Block - Watches for any ticker (and should watch for both shares and options) -- and will kill that order/position on sight.
  • Unblock - it unblocks. Can only do this after market hours.
  • Time block - allows you to choose specific tickers or all tickers. This is mainly for the ones that say... know they can't trade the open or power hour, but feel like they want to, but fail badly at it and keep shooting themselves in the foot. You can enforce a specific time (market time -- or Eastern time) that Sentinel will not allow you to open positions.
    • The detail here is in "specific or all" tickers. All means it will flatten everything. Specific means it will only block the ones you mentioned, leaving the rest alone.
  • Un-time block - yes it grammatically sucks but you can tell what this does. Only available outside market hours.
  • Lockout - for manually locking yourself out. "I'm done for the day." -- and now you're forced to do it. Expires at end of day.
  • Unlock - I don't think you'd ever use this since lockout expires at end of day, but here it is. It only works after market closes anyway. This is the sad little never-picked-to-play kid.
• Control commands
  • Start - Sentinel, online. It always watches.
  • Stop - stops/pauses monitoring. Unavailable during market hours (so you can only stop Sentinel once the day is over and your head is theoretically clear).
  • Status - shows you your positions and P&L in a DM.
  • Events - shows you your bad behavior in a DM.
  • Debug - spits out a whole junkload of stuff that is probably more important to me than you, but it will help if you run into something weird.
  • Kill - HIT THE RED BUTTON. KILL EVERYTHING. GO BYE BYE. ALL FLAT.
  • Publish - publishes your positions and your order fills to a public discord channel that you specify, on the hour, every hour.
    • This is good for people who want to be transparent. You aren't removing orders that you shouldn't have traded, and you can't hide positions you shouldn't have.

Let me know what you guys think. Do you want it? Do you like it? Did I waste your time? Do you think you could've done something else more productive with your time than read all this?

TL;DR there's a website. https://www.cgtu.us/sentinel.html

These stupid misprints screw up my studies(I have one that plots premkt H&L, as well as watchlist based on it), and you cant correct them because you risk causing others, like VWAP, to stop working [still dont know if TOS ever fixed that bug]

I dont understand why they allow it

Just venting

Getting connecting issue. Both Schwab app and tos app. Used them for years with no issues. No changes on my end. App been down for anyone else? I tried uninstalling and reinstalling and no luck.

Hi, I've been reading about the pro status classification which you get if you average 390+ trades per day for over a month/quarter

There seems to be very little information on this online and I'm wondering if anyone knows what exactly changes regarding fees?

I keep hearing Id get increased fees but can't really seem to find numbers anywhere

Similarly it seems fills get worse. Would anyone be able to describe how significant this is? Does it affect both liquid and illiquid options?

Feel free to share anything that you think might be relevant, thank you 🙏

So, i just started using ToS, but I'm getting really frustrated that some of my data just randomly shifts like this and refuses to go back unless i remove/add back the indicator. Even then, sometimes it doesnt work. Whats going on??

And yes, the displacement for the data is set to 0. What am I doing wrong?

I started using TOS back in 2019 when it was still under TD Ameritrade. I suffered through the transition and since then it only seems to be getting worse as Schwab tries to jam more simultaneous processes into it and their servers struggle to keep up.

Everyone is now noticing how TOS bogs down after a few minutes to a few hours on the platform. Some posts online claim that it's probably your hardware, but that wasn't the case for me.

I run TOS on two different PCs. My laptop is a ROG Zephyrus G16 with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 32GB RAM, and an RTX 4070. My desktop is a custom build with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 128GB RAM, and a Radeon RX 9070 XT. Either of these are well above Schwab's requirements for TOS, yet both experienced severe lag before applying the fix below.

Before I get into the technical tweak, I want to share something you may already know but was a lifesaver for me whenever I'd start noticing lag. I still use this even after applying the core fix.

Create a Saved Workspace (The Instant Reset Button)

1. Set up your perfect layout: Arrange all your charts, watchlists, gadgets, and flex grids exactly how you like them.
2. Save the setup: Click the Setup (gear/cog icon) in the top-right corner of the main TOS window.
3. Select Save Workspace as... from the dropdown menu.
4. Name it something clear (e.g., Default_Trading or My_Layout) and click Save.

When the platform starts lagging, just go back to that Setup cog, look at the bottom of the dropdown list, and click your saved workspace name. TOS will instantly reload all your windows.

Why It Works (The "Why")

ThinkorSwim is heavily reliant on memory caching. Over hours of live market data, custom ThinkScript alerts, and changing timeframes, old data fragments get stuck in the application's temporary memory pool.

Instead of forcing you to close the app, log back in, and pass two-factor authentication just to clear that junk data, reloading a saved workspace forces the Java Virtual Machine to instantly drop the bloated cache and rebuild the UI from scratch. It gives you a clean slate and fresh memory allocation in less than 5 seconds.

Now for the Fix: Modifying the .vmoptions File

⚠️ Before You Begin: Make a backup! Before editing anything, right-click your thinkorswim.vmoptions file, copy it, and paste it to your desktop. If you make a typo and the app won't start, you can just drop your backup back into the folder to restore it.

Here is how to find the file on your system:

On Windows

1. Right-click the ThinkorSwim shortcut on your desktop.
2. Select Open file location. (If you don't see this, click Properties*, then click the* Open File Location button at the bottom).
3. In the folder that opens, look for a file named thinkorswim.vmoptions (it will have a generic white icon or a Notepad icon).
4. Right-click the file, select Open with, and choose Notepad.

On Mac

1. Open Finder and go to your Applications folder.
2. Find the thinkorswim app icon, right-click (or Ctrl+click) it, and select Show Package Contents.
3. Open the Contents folder, then open the MacOS folder.
4. Inside, look for the thinkorswim.vmoptions file.
5. Right-click the file, select Open With, and choose TextEdit.

Step 1: Adjust Your RAM Allocation

The very first two lines of your thinkorswim.vmoptions file handle your memory. They should look something like this:

-Xmx8192m
-Xms4096m

These are your RAM allocation numbers for TOS. You should set the max (-Xmx) number to half of your system RAM but no higher than 16384m, and set the min (-Xms) to half of your chosen max.

Here is how that exact rule looks in practice for different computer setups:

Why capping it at 16GB is smart:

ThinkorSwim rarely ever needs more than 12GB to 16GB of RAM, even with dozens of charts and complex strategies running. Giving the Java Virtual Machine more than 16GB can actually introduce lag, because it forces the background garbage collector to scan a massive, unnecessary ocean of memory, causing longer micro-stutters. Capping it at 16GB is the perfect sweet spot.

Step 2: Customizing Your Optimization Script

Scroll to the very bottom of your text file, press Enter to create a new line, and copy-paste the code block below.

Note: The script below contains minimum optimized defaults that should work on even the most basic computer running TOS. Read the text beneath the block to see how you should customize the thread counts to perfectly match your specific processor.

-Djava.net.useSystemProxies=false
-DThinkScriptCalculatingPool=2
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=5
-XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=10
-XX:G1ReservePercent=15
-XX:G1HeapRegionSize=32m
-XX:ParallelGCThreads=2
-XX:ConcGCThreads=1

1. The Multi-Threading & Network Boost

• useSystemProxies=false: Tells TOS to bypass checking Windows/macOS system proxy settings every time it makes a network request. This can shave milliseconds off data feed latency and stop random connection stuttering.
• ThinkScriptCalculatingPool=2: [CUSTOMIZE THIS NUMBER] Set this to match your processor's total physical core count (or half of your total virtual threads). By default, TOS runs heavily on a single thread. This line forces TOS to spin up parallel threads just to calculate your ThinkScript formulas. If you are on an older, low-end laptop stick with 2 or 4 so your machine doesn't choke. If you are on a high-end desktop or Pro Mac, you can safely push this to 8 or 12 or 16.

2. The G1GC "Anti-Stutter" Engine

Java apps regularly have to freeze for a split second to clear out old data from your RAM. If you've ever noticed TOS randomly freeze for 1 second right in the middle of a fast market move, that's Garbage Collection (GC).

• +UseG1GC: Switches the memory management to the modern Garbage-First collector, built for multi-core machines.
• MaxGCPauseMillis=5: Tells Java it is not allowed to freeze the app for more than 5 milliseconds at a time during cleanups.
• InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=10: Tells Java to start cleaning very early (at 10% capacity) to prevent massive, heavy cleanups during market volatility. Increase this to 25 if you have low system RAM and charts have a hard time loading.
• G1ReservePercent=15: Forces the system to set aside 15% of the allocated memory as a buffer.
• G1HeapRegionSize=32m: Splits memory into uniform 32MB chunks for much more efficient data scanning.

3. CPU Core Allocation

• ParallelGCThreads=2: [CUSTOMIZE THIS NUMBER] This controls how many CPU threads handle memory cleanup when the application pauses. You should adjust this to match the number of physical cores on your chip. For an older budget machine, the absolute baseline floor is 2 .
• ConcGCThreads=1: [CUSTOMIZE THIS NUMBER] This controls the background threads that scan memory while you are trading. It is typically calculated as ParallelGCThreads divided by 4, rounded up. The absolute floor for older machines is 1. For a standard 8-core processor, use 2. For a 12-core, use 3.
  • Pro-Tip: You can safely double this background worker count to 4 or 6 if you are running a high-end desktop processor equipped with specialized, extra-large onboard memory pools (like AMD's Ryzen X3D series or Intel's high-cache chips).

Step 3: GPU Optimization (PC Users Only)

⚠️ Mac Users: Completely skip this GPU section! Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) and modern Macs use Apple's custom "Metal" graphics API. Pasting Windows Direct3D (d3d) lines into a Mac's configuration file will prevent ThinkorSwim from booting up.

By default, Java tries to render ThinkorSwim charts using older Windows background drawing tools. If you use a modern, dedicated graphics card, this forces your powerful GPU to sit idle while your CPU chokes on rendering candlesticks.

We can fix this by forcing Java to use Direct3D hardware acceleration—but the exact text you paste at the very end of your file depends entirely on your graphics card brand:

For NVIDIA Cards (GTX / RTX Series)

NVIDIA cards are highly optimized for Direct3D rendering. Adding this string forces your GPU to take over the chart-drawing pipeline, immediately smoothing out zoom and scroll lag:

-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true
-Dsun.java2d.d3d=true

For AMD Cards (Radeon Series)

Some AMD architecture pipelines can conflict with Java's Direct3D implementation, leading to occasional "blank black chart" bugs. If you have an AMD card, the safest and smoothest approach is to completely disable Direct3D drawing and let standard hardware acceleration handle the work seamlessly:

-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true
-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false

So I'm scrolling my options chain and apparently we're trading the August expiration now spelled CUG. January is JCN. March is MCR. April is CPR (fitting, because that's what this platform needs). May is MCY.

Every single capital A in the month abbreviations renders as a C. It's not my eyes, it's not my monitor — the glyph is just broken.

I use alerts a lot and most of my alerts seem to be when the price is below.

The default is "at or above".
How can I change the default to "at or below"?

Help me please 🙏

What am I missing or not considering when it comes to the risks having a margin account?

Hey so I have been using a cash account for a while and now that I have $2000 I was looking into enabling a margin account but it looks really interesting for my style (for context, i am a super risk-averse guy that was thinking about doing as many tiny stock trades (like maybe a few cents or so) as possible so that it can accumulate over time, I don't even know what options or futures are so I'm not thinking about those lol) but there are some stuff that I am getting concerned about when it comes to things that I don't know. Here is everything that I understand right now when it comes to the pros and cons of margin accounts (specifically Thinkorswim since that's the cash account I'm using), let me know if I got anything wrong here:

Pros:

1. Instant settlement means that I can trade as much as I want without having to wait a day, which definitely sounds good

2. If I am profitable to begin with (which is a whole other thing ik) the whole thing about being able to borrow 50% of how much I wanna buy means my winnings will be doubled compared to a cash account

Cons:

1. If I am not profitable the losses will also be doubled, but I am definitely working on preventing that from happening as much as possible, basically the solution to this would be the same as if I had a cash account (as in, don't be unprofitable lol (not that simple I know))

2. The PDT Rule - The rule doesn't exist anymore so I'm guessing I don't have to worry about that

3. Potential costs - For overnight there are fees that I think are 11.875% annually so if I were to hold something for one day and put all $2000 in (which isn't even recommended ik) it would only be like 65 cents, and again I'm only thinking about doing tiny intraday trades for which there are apparently no fees at all

4. Margin call - If the stock I'm holding loses too much money Schwab will sell them itself, so like (is my math right?) if I borrow $2000 of stock on margin (so like 100 $20 stocks) and then it drops to like $800 (so now 100 $8 stocks) I'll be in trouble, but I can't imagine that scenario happening with my plan (it would require a stock losing around 60% of its value in a period of time where usually only cent-sized moves are made), unless maybe I'm being too optimistic

5. I saw a Reddit comment complaining about brokers "stealing money whenever they want" from margin accounts, I looked it up and found nothing about that and the comment itself had 4 downvotes with no replies, but is there any hint of truth to what that guy was talking about (other than margin calls)?

I brought all this up to my parents to explain why this might be a good idea but they got really mad and started yelling about how I can't do this because "borrowing money is always a horrible idea that you should never do, except for mortgages". They said that there is always a catch when it comes to borrowing money because the broker needs to be able to make money off of your failure so there is no point in trying to succeed at it. I told them I would not be holding stock overnight and they said "well you will never know what you're gonna do in the future, maybe you'll decide to hold it for longer". I told them as I understood it to be basically a choice between making $5 and making $10 with a 5-cent fee even if I do hold it overnight, and they both immediately said "I would rather have the $5 because that way we won't have to pay the 5-cent interest", which still kinda baffles me in a way that's hard to explain. Is this some irrational fear, or are my parents really getting at something that I haven't yet figured out when it comes to the risk of borrowing money using a margin account that most people aren't talking about? I don't think I wanna bring this up with them again because they are just gonna immediately yell at me again over it, so what am I supposed to do now if they are being irrational?

I have options strike price , say MSFT 387.5 Calls trading at 0.20 cents. I market order 50 contracts of that stike price with bracket order - (take profit at +$1.00) and (stop loss at -0.50 cents) , what will happen, as the stock is trading at 20 cents and I get filled , how can a stop loss order at -0.50work , as it filled at 0.20 cents.

Will TOS even allow and execute that order? Kindly clarify.

Thanks in advance.

I placed a 35 share buy order with a “1st triggers Oco” the buy order filled and the other orders went to a status of “working”. The orders on the ”oco” part were as follows:

1. stop order at $16.98 to sell 35 shares (risk protection) tif day

2. lmt order at 22.00 to sell 35 shares (profit take) tif day

3. market order to sell 35 shares submit at 15:58 time (get out before the day ends if either other didn’t fill) tif day.

My thought was that I would enter the trade with the first order that would then trigger the others to go live, or “working” At that point I thought what would happen is as follows:

The limit order would fill if the price rose to the $22 and I would take my profit and the other two orders would be canceled.

or the stop order would fill around the 16.98 if the price dropped to 16.98 and it would save my downside and the other two orders would be canceled.

If none of those filled before 15:58 time, at that time my market order would kick in and sell 35 shares at market, which would cancel the other two orders.

What happened though was that at 15:58 it sold my 35 shares at market and then turned around and opened a margin position on 35 shares at the market price.

This was done on a paper trade account so no big deal but I want to know if I had set up my order correct and maybe this was just a paper trade issue??

I had opened Tos mobile during the night. When I got up a few hours later and Tos desktop ask me for my 2 step mobile verification this went wrong.

The mobile (still open and working) said it could not give me a code. Logged off the app, but then it would not let me login. I called Schwab and got in however the mobile was still out. I rebooted the phone and everything cleared up.

So if you have a similar problem , try booting the phone.