We received the following update from ThinkOrSwim’s support team this afternoon announcing the upgrades and new features in the June 2010 version of the ThinkDesktop platform.

It’s no wonder our developers are confused. When HR decided to reward their hard work with some fun, it turned out to be tickets to a SATC 2 party. A toxic combination of Flirtinis, depilatories and faux paparazzi gave them a code-killing hangover. And why would there be a movie about four people traveling to some desert instead of the birthplace of legendary computing pioneer, Sergey Lebedev, in Novgorod? This was a reward? Management quickly delivered 20 pounds of pork rinds, 10 cases of Red Bull and the unlock codes for Red Dead Redemption to get the team back on track. Whew…

On Saturday, June 19, 2010 we will be releasing version 1664. New features include:

• Market Watch: Heat Map lets you see the relative performance of stocks in an index or watch list in graphic terms. Each symbol is listed in a box, with the color indicating the percentage change up or down, and the area of the box indicating relative market cap. Shift-click to drill down into industry sectors.

For illustrative purposes only

• Watch Lists: The new ‘Lovers and Losers’ watch lists show you stocks with third-party analyst upgrades and downgrades, as well as pre- and post-market movers.

For illustrative purposes only

• Widget 360: Zoom feature lets you click and hold the mouse and drag over the area of interest, both vertically and horizontally, to get more detail. Click the button in the upper right hand corner to restore the full view. Also, when you resize the 360 window, it will reopen to that size if you close it.

For illustrative purposes only

• Audio Stream: Global FX chat brings live forex commentary throughout the trading day.
• Monitor: Sub group feature lets you separate and track trades separately. Create them on the Account Statement page, transfer executed trades to them, and see their p/l on the Position Statement.

For illustrative purposes only

• thinkScript: Auto-complete, font control and tools window options when writing code, more custom columns on the Trade page, descriptions for arithmetic operators, data types and colors.
• Global: Streamlined (that means faster!) quote delivery.

Please note: Due to increased market volatility, our clearing firm is requiring any account that establishes an uncovered short option position to have a minimum net liquidating value of $5,000. This requirement for naked short option orders is effective immediately.

The highly anticipated new edition of thinkMoney is hitting mailboxes now. Keep a look out for yours! And you can always check out past editions here.

The Support Team
thinkorswim by TD AMERITRADE
(866) 839-1100

The risk of loss in trading securities, options, futures and forex can be substantial. Clients must consider all relevant risk factors, including their own personal financial situation, before trading. Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. See the Options Disclosure Document: Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options. A copy can be requested via email at support@thinkorswim.comor via mail to 600 W. Chicago Ave., #100, Chicago, IL 60654-2597. Trading foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk, as well as its own unique risk factors. Forex investments are subject to counter-party risk, as there is no central clearing organization for these transactions. Please read the Forex Risk Disclosure before considering the trading of this product. A forex dealer can be compensated via commission and/or spread on forex trades. TD AMERITRADE is subsequently compensated by the forex dealer. Futures and forex accounts are not protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Supporting documentation for any claims, comparisons, recommendations, statistics, or other technical data, will be supplied upon request.

thinkorswim, Division of TD AMERITRADE, Inc. Member SIPC FINRA NFA

2010 © TD AMERITRADE IP Company, Inc.

Distributed by: TD AMERITRADE, Inc. 1005 North Ameritrade Place, Bellevue, NE 68005

We received the following email update from thinkorswim founder Tom Sosnoff today (5.11.10):

Dear Swimmer!

We’d like to update you on the latest development since the acquisition of thinkorswim, Inc. by TD AMERITRADE Holding Corporation.

Today marks the beginning of the transition of your introducing broker/dealer – from thinkorswim, Inc. to TD AMERITRADE, Inc. – for all your existing thinkorswim brokerage, futures and forex accounts. An introducing broker/dealer accepts your orders, manages your client service needs and is responsible for all general account supervision. The thinkorswim that you know and love will be renamed thinkorswim by TD AMERITRADE. Our Web site will feature new branding reflecting this change, which is the first step in the coming together of these two great companies.

Your experience will remain the same

The software, service and support that you count on at thinkorswim will remain the same. There will be no difference in the way you access your account. You’ll continue to trade on your favorite platform, at your current commission rates, and talk with the same people when you need help. And needless to say, our commitment to providing you with a high level of security will remain as strong as ever.

You will continue to see enhancements to the trading platform. You’ve already experienced some over the past few months, and more are on the way. We have added six software releases packed with powerful new tools, including the Prodigio scanning and automatic order routing system; OnDemand, which lets you replay a trading day tick-by-tick; myTrade Twitter connectivity; Gadget 360, which displays complex options data in easy-to-interpret graphical form; unprecedented order control for the active trader; live-from-the-floor Market Cast squawk box; custom position grouping; and more charts, more futures and options, more FX, more analytics, more alerts, more news. And we’re not stopping there!

Many of these enhancements have been based on ideas that have come from our clients. We want to make the trading platform as good as it can possibly be – so please keep your suggestions coming!

What you need to know

thinkorswim by TD AMERITRADE will continue to use Penson Financial Services, Inc. as your clearing broker – which means Penson will continue to safeguard your assets, in addition to managing your trade settlements, trade confirmations and statements.1

By continuing to use the thinkorswim.com Web site and downloads, you are agreeing to the thinkorswim by TD AMERITRADE Client Agreement, which reflects terms identical to those you previously accepted by using your thinkorswim, Inc. account. However, as a result of the conversion to TD AMERITRADE, you will be covered by the terms of the TD AMERITRADE, Inc. privacy statement, effective May 26, 2010. Both thinkorswim, Inc. and thinkorswim by TD AMERITRADE will comply with SEC Regulation S-P (Privacy of Consumer Financial Information) in connection with the conversion.

You don’t have to do anything; the transition to TD AMERITRADE, Inc. as introducing broker for your thinkorswim, Inc. account, will occur automatically, unless you contact us on or before May 26, 2010. If you wish to decline this transition, please call us at 800-669-3900, or write us at TD AMERITRADE thinkorswim, PO Box 2209, Omaha, NE 68104; you will also need to open an account with another broker and request that your new broker initiate a total account transfer on or before May 26, 2010. Please note that thinkorswim will not charge any transfer-out fees.

Watch for further enhancements to our platform over the coming months. We will continue to keep you informed as new updates occur.

Sincerely,

Tom Sosnoff
Cofounder of thinkorswim
Senior Vice President, Trader Group
TD AMERITRADE

I’m pretty happy with the cumulative tick indicator now, so I’m graduating it out of “works in progress”. I think it does fairly well identifying which side of the tape to be on, which can be a real sticky point for me. Here’s a plot from the last week or so on a 5 min chart for ES:

The indicator uses paintbars for when the cumulative tick is rising or falling, hence the red or green bars. There are a few whipsaws, but on the whole when the market is trending it picks the right direction to be in. Not a complete trading system, but maybe a useful indicator to build something with. It can have a problem with gaps when looking at a multi-day chart (like with this morning), so watch out there.

The inputs:

Period = The EMA period for averaging the highs and lows of the NYSE Tick.

EMA = The EMA period to apply to the cumulative tick line for smoothing.

Lookback = Number of bars to look back to determine if the smoothed cumulative tick line is rising or falling (rising if current value is above the value X bars ago, vice versa for falling)

UseTrend (yes/no) = This uses the trend correction that I wrote about before, or not

This one is free. You can download the release of my Cumulative Tick Indicator at “Released Thinkscript Studies” on my Google site. If it helps you bank a big trade, feel free to send some my way

Continue to Cumulative Tick Indicator with Paintbars for Think or Swim

Okay, this is making me scratch my head a bit. Here’s a plot of the ES with my “Messing around with Cumulative Tick” indicator on it, showing 1 hour bars since March 1:

There are two sub-panel indicators. The upper is showing a histogram of the high and low values of the NYSE Tick. There are also two lines. The green line is an EMA(20) of the high values of the Tick. The red line is an EMA(20) of the low values of the Tick. If the Tick high was above the high EMA, the Tick bar is green, else it’s gray. If the Tick low was below the low EMA, the Tick bar is red, else it’s gray. The third dashed white line is the mean of the high EMA and the low EMA.

This is graphically showing what is going on under the hood in the lower indicator, which is my cumulative tick indicator. If a Tick high is above the high EMA (showing as green), then the difference between the high and the EMA is summed. Opposite for the Tick lows. So basically the more extreme a spike in the Tick compared to the corresponding EMA, the more it will move the cumulative tick.

You can see that we’ve been in a consistent downward trend in the cumulative tick. The Tick spikes on the downside have far outweighed the spikes on the upside. Normally I would chalk that up to underlying weakness in the market, and stock distribution in the face of rising prices. But it has been persistent in the face of a strong uptrend. I noticed two things:

1. The high EMA is further from the zero axis, so the strong high Tick readings aren’t getting as much credit. The low EMA is closer to the zero axis, so the strong down Tick readings are getting maybe too much influence.

2. The mean of the high and low EMA’s is almost always above zero. The broad buying strength is showing up here, but not making
Continue to Weird Cumulative Tick Plot: Distribution or Math Artifact?

The fanciest platform just got fancier.  ThinkOrSwim is notorious for pushing the amount of cool features that looks amazing and easy to use.  Some thought ThinkOrSwim’s development team would be hindered after TD Ameritrade acquired ThinkOrSwim, but these codemonkeys are still at work at full force.  These guys are like the Apple of trading platforms.  We received the following update from ThinkOrSwim’s support team this afternoon announcing the upgrades and new features in the April 2010 version of the ThinkDesktop platform.

There’s always a dark side to celebrity. When news broke of thinkorswim’s first-place ranking in Barron’s*, our development team decided to live it up and dine like royalty on red meat, Red Bull and red velvet cake…and more red meat. And like the kings and queens of yore, they developed something more than award-winning software — ouch. But ever the opportunists, they decided to turn their discomfort into a potentially award-winning screenplay: The Adventures of Gout Boy and Doji Girl. You might think it’s a long-shot, but we’ve already sold an option to Spielberg.

On Saturday, April 17 at 6:00 am CDT, we will be releasing version 1637 of our software. Enhancements include:
Widget 360: Improved interface with mouse-over data for confetti charts, a legend in the lower left hand corner and removing non-standard options.

Scan Tab: Now offers searches based on custom technical indicators.

Sidebar: Drag and drop symbols from the left hand Watch list to the Trade or Charts pages by clicking and holding the cursor on the symbol and dragging it to the symbol field.

Active Trader: Now available when working in think OnDemand.

Account Info: Customizable layout with new FX profit/loss data fields.

Trade Page: Enhancements including narrower strike column, and new “Max covered return”, as well as a “hard to borrow” indicator on the Quotes page.

Account Statement: Customizable layout for Total Account view showing Account Name and Account Code.

Charts

1. New time axis features:
   ability to change scale via mouse dragging
   button to control right expansion settings
2. 180 days of hourly charts

New Studies

1. David Elliott’s: FW_CCI, FW_DPO_MOBO (Momentum Breakouts), FW_FisherTransformer, FW_MMG, FW_MOBO Momentum Breakout, FW_SOAP
2. John Carter’s: TTM_LRC
3. AdvanceDecline
4. VortexIndicator

thinkScript

1. New editor window:
   adjustable font
   hide-able areas
   tool windows
   inserting language items into code using reference tree
   fixed pasting code from Outlook, Word or any rich-text editor
2. Web-reference integration
3. Deprecated declare fullrange

thinkScript Functions

1. New addChartBubble – a label can be placed at a defined location
2. Improved addChartLabel -
   overlapping of labels is automatically prevented
   single parameter for a message, new concat function can be used to compose it
   can be used more than one time within a study
   can be used without plot definition
3. getYyyyMmDd returns date in CST
4. Fixed calculations of those which names are ended with All
5. Extended parameters of InertiaAll, stdevAll and sterrAll

Please Note: this release will require that access to the logged-in portion of the thinkorswim website, the account opening process, and all trading applications will be disabled from 12am to 6am CDT. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

thinkorswim support
(866) 839-1100

* thinkorswim was rated #1 overall online broker and “best for options traders” in Barron’s ranking of online brokers, 3/14/2010 and 3/16/2009; “best software-based online broker” and “best for options traders,” 3/6/2006 and 3/5/2007. thinkorswim was evaluated versus others in eight total categories, among them: the types of tradable investments; the quality and ease-of-use of screeners that help you choose stocks, options or funds; and the site’s startup process, overall functionality and potential for customization. thinkorswim topped the list in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010 with the highest weighted-average score and was runner-up in 2008. Barron’s is a registered trademark of Dow Jones & Company © 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. Supporting documentation for any claims, comparisons, recommendations, statistics, or other technical data, will be supplied upon request.

Think or Swim implemented both Volume Profile and TPO Profiles as built-in studies in the latest release. I was working on a hacked version for volume by price that was clogging up my processor, so this is a welcome addition. Here’s what the settings do:

Price Per Row Mode: Choose how it calculates how wide the volume “bin” is. You can choose “Automatic”, where it figures out a spacing on its own, or you can choose “Ticksize”, where each bin is one tick wide, or “Custom” where you can specify a width. If you choose “Custom” then the input “Custom Row Height” is used, but otherwise it is ignored.

Time Per Profile: The amount of time that each profile will include. “Chart” gives you only one profile covering the entire chart. “Hour” gives you one profile for each hour in the chart, and so forth.

[...]

Continue to Volume Profile Goes Native to Think or Swim!