The Spread Book is a database that contains all working orders of clients using thinkorswim. You can scan the Spread Book for potential trading ideas based on spreads that are currently traded in the platform. The orders contained in the Spread Book are completely anonymous and users are not able to determine whether the trade is being placed as an opening order or a closing order. Nonetheless, you can view the trades that have been placed but not yet filled.
How to Use Spread Book
- In the symbol selector, type in the symbol you would like to perform the scan for.
- In the Spread drop-down menu, select the spread type you would like to view the orders for. Selecting All will display all orders for the specified symbol regardless of the spread being traded. In addition to the regular spread types, you can select unbalanced spreads, i.e., spreads in which the number of options sold does not equal to the number of options purchased. In the Spread menu, unbalanced spreads have tildes before their names (e.g., ~Butterfly or ~Iron Condor).
- In the table below, you will see all working orders for the specified symbol with the selected spread type. You can sort this table by a number of metrics represented in column headers: clicking on a header will sort the table by the respective variable in the ascending order, clicking again will change the order to descending.
- You can create your own order based on any order featured in the table: right-click on the desirable order and choose Create duplicate order (or Create opposite order if you would like to follow the opposite trading strategy). This will populate the Order Entry dialog with all the necessary fields.
- Carefully review the information in the Order Entry dialog and make changes, if necessary. Click Confirm and send.