Watchlists are one of the key thinkorswim® features. A watchlist is a collection of symbols with their corresponding market data. They often include companies, derivatives, or constituents of an index such as NASDAQ 100, the Dow Jones Industrials, or the S&P 500. Watchlists may also contain symbols that represent economic trends or industry groups, these symbols are not directly tradeable but are comprised of instruments that are.
Watchlists appear in many thinkorswim features, including Scanner, FX Global Currency Map, Stock Hacker, and Use The News. The full-scale Watchlist interface is available under MarketWatch > Quotes.
In this article, we'll focus on the Watchlist gadget. Its functionality is similar to other instances of watchlists throughout the platform.
In the gadget title, you can find the following controls:
- Watchlist selector. Click the watchlist name to create, delete, or switch between watchlists. In addition to your personal watchlists, you can access public watchlists from categories such as Lovers and losers, Top 10, and industry-based lists. You can also view your portfolio watchlist, which displays symbols that have positions in the currently selected account.
- Arrows ß. Use the up and down arrows to move through watchlists in a group. The up arrow takes you to the previous watchlist, while the down arrow takes you to the next.
- Symbol link S. Use the color-coded clipboard to link components. Clicking the S icon opens a color-and-number selection menu. In this menu, select a color to link the watchlist to other thinkorswim components with the same color code.
Tip: Consider linking a watchlist to the symbol selector and the Dashboard gadget. This way, clicking through the watchlist automatically displays the corresponding symbols in the symbol selector and the Dashboard. - Show actions menu [. Detach, switch, or delete the watchlist gadget. This menu also provides print and screenshot options.
You can also add or edit securities in a watchlist directly:
- To add a security: Click the empty cell at the bottom of the Symbol column, type a symbol, and press Enter.
- To edit a security: Click the security’s name in the Symbol column, type a new symbol, and press Enter.
A watchlist can hold up to 100,000 symbols imported from a file or the clipboard, with a 10 MB limit per file. Standard columns, such as Last, Bid, Ask, and Volume, display live data for every symbol in a watchlist regardless of size.
You can also trade directly from the Watchlist gadget. Click a symbol’s Ask or Last price to open a buy order, or click its Bid price to open a sell order. Either action opens the Order Entry Tools pane with a limit order at the corresponding price. If the Bid, Ask, or Last columns aren’t part of your current column set, add them using Customize… (see Change column set below). For details on completing the order, see Order Entry and Saved Orders.
Note: The HALTED flag next to a symbol indicates the symbol is halted on the exchange. The platform rejects orders for halted symbols and displays a notification.
After configuring your watchlists, you can customize them in the following ways:
- Reorder columns. Click and drag a column header to the desired position.
- Sort by column. Click the column header to sort the watchlist. An up arrow Õ appears for ascending order, clicking again switches to descending order (indicated by a down arrow Ô). To remove sorting, click the header a third time or right-click and select No sorting.
- Change column set. To add or remove columns, right-click a column header and choose Customize…, or click the small gear ¢ icon under the section header and choose Customize…. Either method opens the Column set window, which displays two areas: All columns (left pane) and the current set (right pane).
- To add a column, select it in the All columns and click Add Ż.
- To remove a column, select it in the current set and click ź Remove.
- To reorder a column, select it in the current set pane and click the up E or down F arrows on the bottom right.
- You can also drag and drop columns between panes, or double-click a column name to add or remove it.
- To undo unsaved changes, click Restore to return to the last saved version of the set, or click Load Defaults to reset it to the platform defaults.
- Click OK to apply the changes to your current layout, or click Save As… to save them as a new column set.