ToS’s minimum time chart is 1 minute, so you can’t choose a 30 second chart like you can on other platforms, like TradeStation. This can be important because we use 30 second charts in the Stocks and Options room, including in the use of Impulse trading.
Thankfully there is a workaround to get close. However, this is an approximation, so we can’t assure it’s identical.
While we can’t show 30 second charts in ToS, we can use low-number tick charts. We’ve found that 30 tick charts are often relatively close to 30 second charts on the active markets often traded in the Stocks and Options room. So give that a try and see if it appears close to 30 second charts that might be displaying on the trading room’s charts.
Note that tick charts and time charts are impossible to completely correlate, as time charts plot a new bar on a schedule, while tick charts require a number of price changes to plot a new bar. A 30 second chart will plot a new bar every 30 seconds, regardless of whether there is any activity or price change of the market. A 30-second tick chart will only plot a new bar when 30 price changes (up or down) occur. If there are no price changes over 30 seconds, a new bar will not be plotted. Sometimes you’ll see 1 or even no new tick bars in 30 seconds, other times when volatility is high, you may see several tick bars due to a high number of price changes.
So this approximation technique is just that – an approximation, and you can experiment with larger and smaller small-tick numbers to find one that works well for the markets you’re trading. 30 tick charts may be a good starting point for many markets.
Here’s an example of how they compare, with SPX on the 30 sec in TradeStation, along with the SPX at 30 ticks thinkorswim
