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Narrator: Hey traders. My name is Jesse Castellanos, and I'm a senior specialist on the Charles Schwab trade desk. If you're feeling a little cramped trying to apply all of the powerful charting, analysis and trading tools available on the thinkorswim platform to one screen, setting up multiple monitors can help you stay more focused, organized and be more efficient with your trading. I'm going to show you how to set up thinkorswim on multiple monitors, and then we're going to discuss some tips and best practices to make the most of your layout. Let's begin.
Right now, I've reset my workspace to default. And, typically, I have to sift through all my pages that I need. So, in this case, this is where having that second monitor is really going to help out. I'm thinking for this exercise, I want to set up one screen for execution and another for analysis. So, let's go set up that analysis page that I'm going to need.
I'll open up my toolbar to the lefthand side. I can see a quick chart, a watchlist and some live news. Today, I'm really interested in Amazon, so this is something I need to keep an eye one. This information is helpful. However, I really could use some more information beyond this. So, let's go utilize that second monitor. Right here, I have my Amazon chart. I'm going to look to the right hand corner, and I'm going to detach.
Animation: Show Actions menu selected, choice Detach selected.
I'm going to move it over to the second monitor.
After I position my chart on my second monitor, I'm going to make sure it fits. Every monitor is different. Sizing and spacing here is going to be key. So, I'm going to adjust this to fit approximately half of my screen. Then I'm going to go over to my Analyze tab. I'm going to grab my fundamentals screen, look to the right hand side… Show Actions menu. Click and Detach.
At this time, I'm going to do the same thing. Move it over to my second monitor. Click… drag… size accordingly… And pin down.
Animation: The small pin button in the upper right hand corner is selected.
Now you can see this is a much cleaner setup. I can have two pieces of analysis on the same monitor at the same time. Here you can see on my second monitor—on my analysis monitor—I've set up my charts to the left hand side. This is going to be dynamic and update in real time. I can keep an eye on my simple moving averages as well as my RSI studies. To the right hand side, I have my fundamental information. I can identify the company profile, analysis ratings… As well, go take a look at their annual and quarterly numbers. This will allow me to stay informed at a quick glance.
Utilizing the second monitor allows me to see my technical and fundamental analysis all in the same place. However, now I need to really consider about my trading and execution. Let's go back to the first monitor. Here I can populate my Trade tab. I have my position information, my underlying stock information and derivatives should I want to trade those.
The key here is to have enough space to really identify what is going on with the security that I'm trading. I can identify what news has occurred today… keep an eye on the rest of the positions in my account.
So now that I have everything positioned right where I want it to, I'm going to run through all my tools just to make sure they're linked. That way, any tool I adjust or update, it'll speak to all of my other tools on all my other monitors. This little link right here is going to be really valuable to me. I can see this is one red and all of my other one reds will be speaking to one another.
Let's switch to BAC. Here, I can see my news is updated. My trade tab is updated. My chart is updated as well as my fundamentals page.
Now that we've taken a look at our second monitor, let's go back to the first monitor—our execution monitor. This is the setup that works best for me.
While I have excess space on both screens, I have to remember that more isn't always better. Having multiple monitors and multiple detached charts takes up a lot of data on my device. I need to make sure that my setup is simple and it won't distract me. Having too many buttons, too many gadgets, too many tools open at once can divide my attention and be really distracting. The key here is to have these multiple monitors set up in a way that assists me.
However, there are a million ways to do the same thing. It's really a matter of what works best for you.
Now that I have my screens set up the way that I like it, I'm going to save my workspace to make sure this opens up every time I use my thinkorswim. I'll look to the right hand corner and see setup. Click and drop down, and I'm going to Save my Workspace As. I'm going to label this workspace execution and analysis.
Great. Now that I have this workspace saved I want to make sure this opens up every time I use my thinkorswim.
I'll look back to the right hand corner, click on Setup, drop down and click on my application settings.
I'll look to the left hand wall and go to Startup, Workspace used on startup, change that to my desired workspace and apply settings. Now that we've done that, every time I open up my thinkorswim, Execution and Analysis workspace will populate on my two-monitor setup.
So there are a few tips as to how you can set up your thinkorswim on multiple monitors. We're just scratching the surface. There are so many ways to customize. So experiment and see what works best for you.
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