in last 2 years i keep bumping into this the older videos i watch all say how TOS is the greatest for new traders etc. but then when i ask people on forums and chatrooms and read chatroom talks it seems like almost nobody uses TOS anymore at least not their interface directly. they either switch to something else or use another platform TOS based. i personally feel like TOS interface is stuck in the 90s and they just dont care to update it anymore.
Think or Swim is the best overall charting platform I've ever used. When I post in the ES thread, my intraday charts are from trading platforms I use for futures to show my trades on a chart. But when I Post daily and weekly charts they are from Think or Swim. That is because most of my charting I do on TOS. I keep a 5 minute chart open in TOS of whatever instrument I am trading. Tradingview, TrendSpider, and Ninjatrader are others I have tried. I use NT because I have an account I trade with them. I use TopstepX which is built on a Tradingview chassis for my prop accounts. None of those compare to quality of TOS. Not even close to TOS. And if you are an options trader, I don't know why you'd choose anything other than TOS unless you were to choose Tastyworks, which if I am not mistaken was designed by the same guy who built TOS. The only reason I don't trade futures with TOS is they offer no margin relief for day trading and their commissions on futures are double anyone else. But the technology is top shelf. I keep my investment accounts with them so I can continue to have access.
Schwab has gone way up after spending a bundle for TDA...People still must be using it. SCHW Day's Range 81.18 - 82.47 52 Week Range 61.01 - 83.35
I used TOS for sim day trading for about a year and live day trading for a month and a half now. I am very happy with it. Prior to that, for years I used Schwab SS and SSE. TOS is way better.
These are the brokers with margin relief: https://www.cboe.com/tradable_products/find_a_broker/ But how much does margin relief help you in your trading? Exactly how does it help?
Margin relief is so important that some trades aren't even possible without it. SPAN and Reg-T are the pre-reqs for this. Options can be used to replicate payoffs. At the next level, portfolio margin is like a cash market and margin account version of SPAN. A level above that is having a prime brokerage account, which allows you to get margin relief across all assets (cash, future, option, OTC and structured, and with flexible collateral and funding agreements). In order to trade via correlation you need margin relief, via a fixed income durational spread - margin relief, and long/short across global equities -- again, margin relief. Knowing the "who, what, where, and why" of margin relief is the blackmagic of pro trading.
Current margin for NQ is nearly $25k/contract. If you want to day trade 5 contracts at a broker with no margin relief you'd need to deposit $125,000. Do you not see the benefit of trading with a broker that requires half of that amount or even less - sometimes much less, to put on a position that will be opened and closed within minutes or at most a few hours?
You probably meant TradingView? Yes, it's a cool platform where you can simultaneously trade on their advanced trading platform (by the way, my broker fxopen provides its clients with the ability to integrate with TradingView at no extra cost) + use a huge amount of trading information on this portal, including the ability to communicate with millions of traders from all over the world, improving your skills and gaining the necessary experience.