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Thinkorswim Alerts - How to Set Up and Use

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The Thinkorswim trading platform by TD Ameritrade is known for offering a lot of useful features to investors. One of those features is setting alerts.

Many investors like setting alerts because it allows them to be notified if a given stock reaches a particular criteria. They get an automatic notification instead of needing to manually monitor the stock.

This is a guide about Thinkorswim alerts. It will show how to set them up and how to use them.

 

What Is Thinkorswim?

Thinkorswim is a free trading software available from TD Ameritrade.

You can use it to buy stocks and options in the stock market.

TD Ameritrade customers can download Thinkorswim from here. It's available in different versions: desktop, web, and mobile.

Each version is unique and different from each other. This guide is going to show how to set up the desktop version of Thinkorswim.

 

What Exactly Is a Thinkorswim Alert?

A Thinkorswim alert serves the purpose of notifying the user when a certain condition is met in relation to a stock.

When the specified condition is triggered, such as the price of a stock reaching a certain level, Thinkorswim will generate a notification to alert the user.

This notification comes in the form of a desktop notification with an audible sound. The alert also shows up visually at the top left of the Thinkorswim screen.

Until the alert criteria is met, you can see an indication of the alert on your Thinkorswim chart. You can see an example of depicted by the gold line in the following image:

 

How Do You Set Up an Alert in Thinkorswim?

Here are the steps to set up an alert in Thinkorswim:

1. Right-click on the chart of the stock you are interested in.

2. From the right-click menu, select "Create alert."

3. You will be presented with options to set up your alert conditions. You can choose to set the alert based on various conditions such as the mark (the midpoint between the bid and ask price of a stock), the last price, the bid price, or the ask price.

4. Specify the condition for the alert. For example, you can set the condition that the stock price for that stock be "at or below" a specific price.

5. Once you've set the conditions for your alert, click "Create."

After setting up the alert using these steps, Thinkorswim will notify you when the specified condition is met for that stock.

This video about Thinkorswim alerts shows how to do each of those steps:

 

The Thinkorswim layout we used in that video was a custom one we created here at Stock Market Guides. It's available for free and you can learn how to use it in this guide about setting up Thinkorswim.

 

How Do You Use Alerts in Thinkorswim?

The steps above show how to set up an alert, but now that you know that, how do you go about using alerts in Thinkorswim?

Alerts help people monitor stocks they are interested in.

For example, maybe you are only interested in buying stock or options for a particular company if its stock price goes down to a particular support level. Rather than manually checking the stock price repeatedly, you can simply set an alert to notify you when that price is reached.

In terms of knowing when an alert is needed and where to what criteria to use for the alert, that might depend on what exactly your trading strategy or investment approach is.

For example, if you like buying stocks using a pullback trading strategy, you might look for a stock that is in an uptrend and then set an alert at the price point that would reflect the stock having pulled back a sufficient amount.

Ultimately, it's completely up to you how to use alerts in Thinkorswim.

 

Learning More About Thinkorswim Alerts

You can contact us any time if you would like to ask any questions about Thinkorswim alerts or anything about trading in general.