How to Place an Options Trade on tdameritrade.com - YouTube

Hey everybody, Brent Moore's here.

Today we're talking about how to trade options on the TD Ameritrade platform.

First, I want to show you how to navigate to the options area, then I want to show you

how to buy or sell simple options, and then I want to show you where to go for more complex

options trades and how to do those.

Now let's take a look at the TD Ameritrade platform.

So if you want to trade options, you're gonna go to the Trade tab.

Just go to the top of page, click on Trade, and select Options, and it'll bring it up

right here.

Now, the default is just gonna be for a single order, such as buying a call or selling a

put or something like that.

First thing you need to do is put in the underlying symbol.

In this case, I'm gonna put in Microsoft.

Now if you need to look at an option chain for Microsoft, so you can select the strike

price.

Notice Option Chain is located just to the right of the symbol.

I'll just click on that.

And now I can look at the Option Chain for Microsoft.

I can select different months, and view the different strikes, and if I want, I can click

on one of the prices in order to load the option.

So if I wanted to buy a 150 call option for Microsoft, I just click on the Ask price for

the 150 call option.

And notice it loads that information on this page, and then I can just add in the number

of contracts.

In this case, I'll put in two contracts.

It asks whether I want to do a limit order or a market order.

I can select that under Order type, and then I can also put in the price.

Right now, the ask price is 880, so if I put in a price of say 860, my order is designating

that the most I'm willing to spend for this is 860.

And then once the order's ready, I can go to the bottom of the page and click on Review

order and then ultimately place the order if that's what I want.

Now to do a more complex order, I'm going to go to where it says Single order, click

on that, and I can choose the type of order I want to do.

In this case, let's do a vertical put spread.

So, I'm going to click on Vertical put spread.

And now I still have to put in a symbol.

I'll put in Costco, and it gives me the choice for two different options.

Notice it has Buy to open with Contracts, Expiration, and Strike, and a Sell to open

with Contracts, Expiration, and Strike.

So, if I click on Contracts here, I'll do one contract of each, and my expiration date,

I'll pick January 24, and then I can choose the strike price.

In this case, it's showing the same strike price for both, but for my verticals put spread,

I'm going to want to change those strike prices.

So I'm going to make this a 285-290 put spread, so I'll change this to 285.

I'll change this to 290.

And now I have a vertical spread, and you can see those displayed on the right side

of the page.

And just like before, I can go through and change the price if I want.

My net credit right now, because this is a credit spread, is showing as 1.22.

If I want to change that, I can say Hey, I want at least 1.25 out of this.

Of course, there's no guarantee that this will be filled, and of course, this does not

take into account any transaction costs.

I can change the Time-in-force from Day to Good till Canceled if I like, but when I'm

ready, I'm going to click on Review order, and then it gives me a chance to review the

order one last time, and then place the order.

That's how you can trade options contracts on the TD Ameritrade platform.

Now stick around to the end of this video, and I'll have a link for you to click on.