think or swim sucks. any better way

Think or swim is terrible. I hate having to constantly re-run the exe everytime i click the program. Is there a simple way to trade futures without all the clutter of software? I just want a simple order entry screen . My broker is td ameritrade. It keeps asking me to upgrade it and then when I decline the program quits.

 

Obviously this is something specific to your machine. There is nothing wrong with the software, or the upgrade process. You always have to upgrade to the newest version, it takes all of a minute or so.

 

I have it running but there are a dozen charts and I only want the ES instead of all the others

 

Um, close the ones you don’t want?

There only needs to be one window open, the main one. You can have as many extra separate windows as you want, or no others. You can also chose to have just one chart in a window or a whole bunch. For the /ES I would do the Trade tab then click Active Trader.

Spend some time setting it up how you want. Also, use /ESU3 instead of /ES, there are times when just using the two letters gives a bit slower quotes.

 

This is how I trade ES on TOS.

A lot of people seem to have issues with TOS trading Futures but I have no problems with it, I trade Crude on it day in and day out.

CM

 

TOS seems like a great platform. OTOH, IB's TWS is a POS

 

are you serious? would you not recommend using IB to trade futures?

 

It's adequate for swing trading and investing. Probably, great. But for daytrading, the charting and order modification functionality really lacks. Lots of silly quirks with the platform. Ugly layout etc. Most IB daytraders use a front-end like NT, etc. I would describe the TWS platform for charting as arcane, or cumbersome....

 

how do I close the windows i don't want? I don;t see any obvious option to close the windows. Only want to see ES chart but my screen is cluttered with NQ, YM etc. All the charts are compressed and cluttered.

 

Sounds like you have one window, and you have multiple chart panes within the one window. What tab are you on? If you are on the Futures Trader tab, I would say switch to Active Trader then look near the top of the window. Just the left of the Create Alert button (which is a round button with a picture of a bell on it) is a rectangle where you click on the bottom right of the rectangle. The will bring up a grid where you can choose how many panes you want within your window. Then just choose the top left one to get just one big pane within your window.