Real Time Data (RTD) Exported Live to Excel Spreadsheet
Thinkorswim RTD Excel
Have you ever wondered how to include real time live data from Thinkorswim platform into a spreadsheet? Once you learn this simple technique, you will be able to use your spreadsheet skills to build a fully customized live snapshot of the market in real time. Even if you don’t know how to use spreadsheets, this tutorial shows how truly simple it is. With even a rudimentary understanding of spreadsheet formulas you can create a spreadsheet which displays your open positions in a way not possible on the Thinkorswim platform alone.
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DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL ADVISOR AND NOTHING IN THIS VIDEO OR TEXT IS AN ADVERTISEMENT OR RECOMMENDATION TO BUY OR SELL ANY FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT. NOR IS THIS VIDEO OR TEXT INTENDED TO INSTRUCT YOU ON HOW TO MAKE BUY OR SELL DECISIONS USING ANY OF THESE INDICATORS.
*Thinkorswim is a chart analysis platform offered by TD Ameritrade: www.tdameritrade.com
TD Ameritrade provides financial services including the trading of Stocks, Futures, Options and Forex.
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is it possible to do this in the past? or only live
RTD literally stands for “Real Time Data” and therefore has zero capacity to deal with historical data.
definitely understand. Was just curious if there’s a way to plug in a stock and set a specific time to get a complete breakdown of how that stock was behaving and all of its stats at that specific moment in time
Sorry but you cannot do that using Thinkorswim. There are other platforms that allow this functionality.
that actually is incorrect. RTD addin actually streams historical data “live” when you are in on demand mode. I have used this countless times in an advanced trading/scanner built in excel on a daily basis for quite awhile
In my view that is the same exact thing as real time data. RTD does indeed stand for Real Time Data. Running the OnDemand feature on Thinkorswim merely changes the point in time in which real time data is streamed into the spreadsheet. It still does not allow you to load an entire year worth of historical data, which is a feature already available in other trading platforms.
Can we trigger orders based of the formula’s in excel sheet ?
Not directly. I understand there is an API provided by TD Ameritrade which allows some custom programs to be able to access account details and place orders. Not sure if it supports VBA for Excel. I don’t get involved in it all. But I do have a link to it: https://developer.tdameritrade.com/
Is RTD option available on Thinkorswim web ?
I have never used the web based Thinkorswim so I haven’t the foggiest idea what features it supports.
Great Video, but I am missing the very first step. When I copy and paste the files into Excel they all come back with a “#NAME” error. It appears to be related to telling Excel what to do with the “tos” connection.
Make sure you are doing on the Windows version of Thinkorswim. It may not be working while markets are close (this is Real Time Data after all). After accounting for those two items, if it still does not work when markets reopen then check if you have a security setting preventing macros from functioning.
I am trying to export RTD from a scan in TOS (Option Scan) and I follow the steps, but the other columns never populate (just column A). Do you have any trouble shooting suggestions? All I am trying to get is the share price and the option price that appear on my scan. Thank you for any suggestions.
You will probably need to save the scan and select your saved scan as the source of the “Quotes” section of the MarketWatch tab. Once that loads, do your export to Excel from the MarketWatch tab.
Hi Mr Hahn, Hopefully you can help me to advance to the next level with RTD download into excel.
I have not used any of the custom fields, but assume that it is possible to use some of those for conventional parameters like Simple or Expontential Moving Averages, or Average Daily Range ( currently not automatically downloadable). Can you show me where I can find the information to do that? Thanks!
Using this method you can only get current live data from Thinkorswim into Excel. This video is not an introduction to the topic. this video shows the absolutely limits of what is possible.
Hi Mr Hahn,
Is it possible to have a watchlist connected to excel? If I save a TOS-scan into a watchlist, then this watchlist likely changes every time the scanner runs in the background. The question is: can we capture this dynamic list of tickers through excel-RTD?
I can see how a single run of a scanner can be statically connected to excel, but that seems to fix the list of tickers that were found in that run.
I recenltly came across your channel and really appreciated the awesome helpful nuggets that you placed in there. Thank you so much for your help to the community.
Sorry the answer is no but I will take the time to describe things in a bit more detail so you understand how this works. The RTD function “pulls” data from Thinkorswim but Thinkorswim is not allowed to “push” data to Excel. Therefore Thinkorswim is not able to push a new list of ticker symbols into Excel. In order to update the list of ticker symbols in Excel you must manually export them from Thinkorswim.
Thanks much, Mr Hahn, for your response.
I figured, a roundabout, but automated, way of getting it out of TOS: by writing a query through TDAmeritrade-developers’ API. Which seems to return real-time updated watch lists created out of TOS-scans. It’d be so cool to have it straight out of TOS through an excel RTD formula (if it existed) and avoid that entire roundtrip. Alas!
Nice work. Congratulations on working out a solution.
Hi. Is it possible to send data from Excel to Thinkorswim, such as trading orders?
Only live data is supported at this time. Working orders may or may not be supported but historical orders are certainly not.
It it possible for the people at TOS to see what your spreadsheet looks like when you’re running RTD? Do they have a way to snoop?
I do not have the foggiest idea.
Can you give me some idea or advice to send buy and sell orders from excel to thinkorswim.-I will appreciate everything you can tell me.-Thank you very much.-
Hi have no intention of learning how to fully automate trading on Thinkorswim unless and until it is fully sported natively within the platform itself. Plenty of other platforms out there that support this. If fully automated trading is crucial to your trading success you should be moving to a platform that supports it rather than trying to turn a lawn mower into a race car.