Online Broker Review

Updated Saturday, October 1, 2011

iPhone App Grade: C

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Note: On June 11, 2009, thinkorswim was acquired by TD Ameritrade. Because of this, as of July 27, 2011, all new accounts must be opened through TD Ameritrade. Existing thinkorswim accounts will soon be transferred from clearing firm Penson Financial Services to TD Ameritrade Clearing, Inc. Existing customers can still trade on the thinkorswim desktop platform for the time being but web and mobile trading must be done on TD Ameritrade platforms. For the purposes of this site, please read our TD Ameritrade reviews as we will no longer be covering thinkorswim.

Overview:

The thinkorswim iPhone app is a good mobile trading platform. The interface is simple yet intuitive. Viewing basic account information other than positions is nowhere to be found, a glaring omission. Watchlists are useful and easy to customize. Stock charts are fully featured but are very small and cannot be viewed in horizontal mode, another glaring omission. These drawbacks are balanced by the highlight of the app: the trading platform. Stock and option trading is excellent, thanks to the well designed interface and full feature set of advanced order types. Thinkorswim customers who are simply looking for a powerful mobile trading platform without a lot of extras are well served by the thinkorswim iPhone app.

App Store Facts:

App Name: thinkorswim mobile
Version: 115.8
App Size: 9.4 MB
User Rating: 4.5 / 5 stars

Details:

Upon opening the thinkorswim iPhone app, users are prompted to log in. The Remember Me feature automatically logs users in when opening the app. This feature is valid for seven days after which the app will again prompt the user for their password. The general app features, such as quotes and charts, are accessible without logging in. This thoughtful design greatly enhances overall app usability.

The interface consists of a simple list of icons found at the bottom of the app. Let's examine some of the major features of these various menus.

Positions
The positions menu shows a list of the current holdings, the total value of holdings and the total account value. Other metrics that can be viewed include the profit and loss, delta, net liquid, margin and BP effect of each security.

Watchlists
Watchlists are pre-built lists of stocks and indices grouped into categories such as biggest gainers, largest percent losers, most active stocks, etc. Users can also create their own lists. Quotes for individual securities can quickly be accessed from a watchlist or using the symbol lookup search box. Here is a watchlist that consists of recently viewed items (click on images for larger views):

Charts
By default, stock charts are shown below quotes. Charts can be customized by style (bar / area / line / candle) and time frame (1m / 3m / 6m / 9m / 1y / 2y / 3y / 4y / 5y / 10y / 15y / 20y). New to version 2.0, charts can be pinched and stretched to change the date range. There are a massive 187 studies to overlay on charts, which include bollinger bands, simple moving averages and MACD. Note that only one study can be displayed at a time. Here is an example of a 6 month candlestick chart with bollinger bands:

With all of these excellent chart features, it is stunning that there is no option to view charts in horizontal mode by turning the iPhone on its side. As is, the charts are nicely designed but the limited size really reduces their appeal.

Alerts
Alerts are user customizable rules that trigger when security specific conditions are met. For example, here is an alert that we created to trigger when Apple (AAPL) stock trades at or below $300 a share:

Once alerts are created, select the Alerts icon found at the bottom right corner of the app to view active, triggered and canceled alerts.

Stock Trading
To trade stocks, begin by selecting the Trade button at the top right corner of a stock quote menu. This brings up the order editor with the default settings to buy 100 shares with a limit price equal to the most recent ask price. Order types that are available are market, limit, limit on close, market on close, stop loss and stop limit. This is reduced from the full thinkorswim application which in addition offers trailing stop and conditional orders.

Here is an order we put in to buy 1 share of Google (GOOG) with a limit price of $526.50 and a duration of good until canceled (GTC). GTC orders are maintained in the thinkorswim system for an unspecified time period until they are purged:

When we were satisfied with the order we selected the Send Order button which brought up a password entry box and then an order confirmation screen. When we confirmed the order we were directed to the Order List menu with our order populated in the working queue. From this menu, orders can be modified or canceled, with both features working perfectly.

When our order executed our newly acquired position was populated in the Positions menu. Selecting an item from here loads the stock quote menu with an option available to close out the existing position. There is even an option to close out multiple positions at once, making the trading experience a breeze.

Options Trading
To trade options, go to the quotes menu for the underlying security and select the Options tab. From here, options chains can be selected. Select the contract that you are interested in and this will bring up a detailed quote page for this contract. In the example below we selected a June 2010 contract for Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) with a strike price of $50. The contract quote screen shows bid, ask, volume, open, high, low and some additional information such as the basic Greek values:

We decided to purchase this contract so we selected the Trade button in the top right corner of the contract quote screen. This brought up a list of option order types, which includes single orders, verticals, calendars, spreads, straddles, strangles, condors and more. The order types are nearly identical to the order types available on the full thinkorswim application, with the single exception of the "collar and stock" order type.

We chose to trade a single order, which brought up the Order Editor screen and defaulted to purchase 1 contract with a limit price equal to the most recent ask price. This is exactly what we wanted so we selected the Send Order button:

When we were satisfied with the order we selected the Send Order button which brought up a password entry box and then an order confirmation screen. As with equities, from within this menu orders can be modified or canceled and both features work flawlessly.

When our order executed our newly acquired position was populated in the Positions menu. Selecting an item from here loads the stock quote menu with an option available to close out the existing position. There is even an option to close out multiple positions at once, making the trading experience a breeze.

thinkorswim iPhone App