What Cortex Is and Why It Matters
Cortex is Trade Echo's built-in AI analyst. It reads live data from OptionFlow, DealerEdge, dark pool, AlgoEdge, NewsEdge, and your portfolio stats, then answers your questions in plain language. Instead of switching between modules and keeping notes in your head, you ask a question and Cortex synthesizes an answer from the actual signals on the tape right now.
When to Use Cortex
- Morning prep: Run a multi-source scan before the open to set your bias and levels for the day.
- Mid-session checks: Ask whether incoming flow aligns with or contradicts your open positions.
- Pre-trade validation: Describe your thesis and ask Cortex to find the strongest argument against it.
- End-of-day review: Pull a session digest to log what mattered and carry lessons into tomorrow.
- Building agents: Use the Composer to design a rule-driven watcher that monitors the tape for you while you focus on executing.
Your First Cortex Chat: Step by Step
- Open Cortex from the left sidebar. The chat panel appears with a preset selector at the top.
- Choose a preset that matches your question. The preset controls which data tools Cortex draws from. For a broad morning scan, pick Full Scan. For a gamma question, pick GEX Scout. For options flow on a specific ticker, pick Flow Sniper.
- Type your question. Name the ticker and timeframe. "What does the current GEX structure say about SPY direction today?" will give you a focused, useful answer. "What's going on?" will not.
- Read the response. Cortex will tell you what each data source shows and flag any conflicts. Pay attention to those conflicts - they often reveal the real risk in a trade idea.
- Follow up. Cortex holds context across the conversation. Ask it to go deeper on any point, compare two tickers, or map out what would change your thesis.
The 8 Presets: What Each One Is For
- GEX Scout: Gamma exposure, flip levels, and dealer positioning. Use before events or when you need to understand mechanical support and resistance.
- Flow Sniper: Unusual options flow, sweeps, and premium analysis. Use when screening a specific ticker or looking for conviction signals in the tape.
- Dark Pool Radar: Large off-exchange prints and key levels. Use when analyzing where institutions are accumulating or distributing shares.
- Catalyst Scout: Earnings, FOMC, and event setups. Use to build a multi-signal picture before a known catalyst date.
- Risk Scout: SEC filings, financials, and fundamental risk factors. Use for 10-K/10-Q questions and balance-sheet checks.
- My Portfolio: Trade journal stats - P&L, win rate, and behavioral patterns. Use for performance review and sizing decisions.
- Market Recap: Session or week digest across all signals. Use at end of day or end of week for a clean summary.
- Full Scan: All Cortex tools available simultaneously. Use for complex, multi-module questions where you do not want to pre-filter the data sources.
Agents: Cortex Watching the Tape for You
Beyond chat, Cortex lets you build Agents - rule-driven assistants that monitor live data and fire when their conditions are met. You do not have to sit on the screen. An agent can watch for specific flow patterns, GEX level breaks, or dark pool activity and alert you when something matches.
There are two ways to build an agent. The Agent Builder is a structured form where you define rules directly. The Composer is conversational - you describe what you want in plain language, Cortex turns it into a working agent, and you test it right there in chat to see how it would have reacted to real past data. Only deploy the agent once its behavior matches your intent.
Approvals and Execution Controls
Agents do not act on their own. Every signal lands in the Approvals queue, where you review each one and decide whether to act. Nothing moves without your sign-off. You can also pause or resume an agent at any time, or hit the kill switch to stop it immediately. Start with everything routed through Approvals until you have enough history to trust an agent's judgment on a specific setup.
Test in Chat Before You Deploy
Cortex includes a Test-in-Chat workflow for agents built in Composer. Run the agent against recent data and watch how it would have fired. If it would have triggered on noise you do not care about, tighten the rules before going live. This single step saves a lot of unnecessary Approvals review later.
Reading a Cortex Response
A good Cortex answer has a few consistent parts. It will tell you what the data shows (the observation), what that suggests (the inference), and - if you ask well - what would prove the inference wrong (the invalidation). When Cortex flags a conflict between two data sources, that conflict is often the most important thing in the response. Two tools pointing the same direction is a signal; two tools pointing opposite directions is a reason to reduce size or wait.
For Example
Suppose you are watching NVDA before the open. You open Cortex, select Flow Sniper, and ask: "Summarize overnight and early options flow on NVDA and flag any conflict with dark pool data." Cortex pulls the large sweeps from the previous session, notes a heavy call-side bid at the weekly strike, then surfaces a dark pool cluster sitting below the current bid, which is a potential distribution signal. The conflict between aggressive call buying and what may be institutional selling tells you the picture is not clean. You hold off on sizing in aggressively and wait for the open to confirm direction. That is Cortex doing exactly what it is designed to do.
Sharing Presets and Agents
If you build a preset configuration or agent you find valuable, you can share it with a share-link. Anyone with the link loads your exact setup. Sharing is link-based and stays between you and whoever you send it to - there is no public marketplace.
Common Mistakes
- Vague questions with Full Scan: Full Scan gives Cortex access to everything, which means broad questions produce broad answers. Name the ticker, the timeframe, and what you specifically want to know.
- Mismatching preset to question: Asking a GEX question with the Flow Sniper preset will still get you an answer, but it will be incomplete. Match the preset to the data the question is really about.
- Ignoring conflicts Cortex surfaces: When Cortex flags a disagreement between tools, new users often skip past it to get to the directional call. That conflict is frequently the most important sentence in the response.
- Deploying agents without testing: Use Test-in-Chat to validate agent behavior against real data before deploying. An untested agent will often fire on noise you did not anticipate.
Where to Go Next
Once you are comfortable with basic chat, move to 5 Ready-Made Cortex Prompts for copy-paste templates covering flow discipline, dark pool context, GEX mechanics, risk sizing, and multi-source synthesis. When you are ready to push further, Advanced Cortex: Prompt Engineering for Traders covers multi-step analysis chains, cross-tool divergence queries, and signal decay awareness. You can also explore Cortex through the full Cortex feature page, which shows the Composer, Approvals queue, and agent controls in context.