
Learn the basics of day trading, swing trading, and investing on the Thinkorswim platform by setting up accounts, funding, charts, indicators, and order types to maximize opportunities while minimizing risk.
Explore setting up multiple accounts—brokerage and retirement—with tax-deferred growth, access to funds, and day trade or swing trade possibilities across Roth, IRAs, and 401(k)s.
Learn cash versus margin accounts, including two-day settlement and instant buying power up to four times, and apply trees method, risk management, and paper trading for disciplined trading.
Learn how much capital you need to trade, the PDT rule with three trades in five days, and using simulator trading to build confidence before real money.
explain how the pattern day trading rule, set by Finra, protects small investors by limiting three day trades in five days for margin accounts under $25,000.
Master risk management with the trees method—ticker, reason, entry, exit, stop-loss, summary—to build low-risk plans, evaluate risk-reward, and control risk during market hours, pre/post, and overnight.
Set up practical trading charts with indicators like volume, MACD, VWAP, moving averages, RSI, and an active trading ladder to analyze trends and guide buy or sell decisions.
Learn to day trade, swing trade, and invest, combine strategies, and apply the same market direction analysis to manage risk and lock in profits with timely exits.
Differentiate trader and investor mindsets, outlining holding periods, rotation, and decision bases—patterns and price for traders versus fundamentals, EPS, and PE for investors—emphasizing risk management and dividends.
Understand bag holding and the missed opportunity cost of waiting in the red, and learn to sell at a loss to reenter at a lower price with a stop loss.
Master the active trading ladder, a vertical price ladder for quick manual buy and sell executions with configurable increments, enabling execution when prices touch or cross price points.
Master market and limit orders to plan entries, exits, and stop losses for stock trades. Explore how buy/sell market orders and buy/sell limit orders respond to current market price.
Learn to use buy stop, sell stop, stop-loss, and trail stop orders to plan entries, exits, and risk management, including breakouts above resistance.
Learn how OCO bracket orders place two sell orders—one for profit and one for stop loss—triggered by a trigger order, with brackets and customizable targets, risk management via trail stops.
Explore why extended hours trading matters as CPI, PPI, jobless claims, and earnings drive volatility. Learn to use limit orders at the ask or bid in thinkorswim during extended hours.
Check out our other courses and content to continue your educational journey toward enhanced financial literacy. Join us again soon and commit every day to do something great.
As a continued thank you when you purchase our PART 1 course content, you only pay for what is currently in the PART 1 library at that time. Anything we add to the PART 1 library after you purchase is free to you as you purchased lifetime access to CURRENT and FUTURE PART 1 content.
The purpose of this course is to provide knowledge, comprehension and application training on Think or Swim trading platform to accurately complete the objectives as stated below.
Define the "Basics" setup in regards to Day Trading, Swing Trading or Investing.
Describe the use and importance of the "Basic" setup in regards to account type, dollar amount funding requirements, charts, indicators, order types.
Identify proper account type, dollar amount funding requirements, charts, indicators, order types and risks to maximize opportunities and minimize opportunity costs.
Demonstrate the process to properly set up your account type, proper dollar amount funding requirements, charts, indicators, order types and active trading ladder that best fits for your trading needs.
After completing this course, you will have skills to set up your various accounts, dollar amount funding requirements based on if you are a trader or an investor, build your charts and format your indicators. You will also have the skills to know which order types to use depending on your trading plan and your intent. More importantly, you will know which order types are available at various market times. This is critical as some order types provide for an automated process to buy and sell and some order types have to be manually performed.