The Core Principle: Stack Your Edges
No single tool gives enough conviction on its own. A DealerEdge read tells you about mechanical pressure, but not what institutions are buying. An OptionFlow cluster tells you where money is moving, but not whether the gamma backdrop supports a follow-through. An AlgoEdge alert tells you a name is active, but not whether the chart structure sets up an entry. The daily system is designed to bring these signals together before you act so that each trade you place has multiple independent reasons behind it.
When DealerEdge, OptionFlow, and AlgoEdge all point the same direction on the same ticker at the same time, that alignment is the signal. The goal of your daily routine is to be ready to recognize it when it appears, rather than scrambling to catch up after it has already moved.
The sections below map out a concrete routine from pre-market through the close. Adjust the timing to your schedule and your instruments, but keep the structure: scan broadly, narrow to confirmed names, size your risk, and record every result.
Before the Week Starts: Build Your Workspace
Set aside fifteen to twenty minutes on Sunday evening or Monday morning before markets open to build or review your Workspace layout. Add tiles for DealerEdge, OptionFlow, AlgoEdge, a Watchlist, and a Cortex chat. Arrange them in the order you actually scan: your macroview first (DealerEdge), then individual name activity (OptionFlow and AlgoEdge), then your list of confirmed names (Watchlist). Save the layout so it loads identically every morning.
Attach a Cortex agent to the layout. The agent reads the state of your tiles in real time, so when you ask it for a morning summary, it already knows what is on your screen. Use it for the first pass: ask for dealer positioning on your top five tickers, any overnight AlgoEdge follow-through, and high-premium OptionFlow from the pre-market session. Let the agent do the initial sweep, then work through the steps below to confirm and prioritize.
A second layout for active trading hours can be useful once your routine is established. The pre-market layout centers on scanning; the active layout centers on watching confirmed names and managing open trades.
Pre-Market Routine: 8:00 to 9:30 AM ET
Pre-market is where you do the work that makes trading hours feel calm and deliberate rather than reactive. The goal is to arrive at 9:30 with a short, prioritized watchlist and clear levels for each name on it.
Step 1: Macro Orientation (5 minutes)
Before you look at any individual ticker, understand the overall environment. Check futures direction and overnight range. Are the major indices up or down pre-market, and by how much relative to recent daily ranges? Are there obvious macro catalysts on the calendar (Fed speakers, CPI, jobs data, earnings from major names)?
Open NewsEdge and scan the headline feed. You are looking for anything that changes the character of the session: unexpected data releases, geopolitical events, major upgrades or downgrades, and any earnings reactions that might set a sector tone. This takes five minutes but often tells you whether today is likely to be a trending session or a chop session before any tool says so.
Step 2: Read DealerEdge (5 minutes)
Open DealerEdge and read the environment for SPX and SPY first, then check your top two or three individual tickers. For each, note four things:
- The GEX Rating: 1 to 2 means tight ranges, mean reversion, and fading breakouts. 4 to 5 means explosive, trending conditions where momentum strategies work better. Rating 3 is neutral. This single number shapes every other decision you make today.
- The Anchor Point: The highest GEX strike. In a low-rating environment, this is often your session target for range trades.
- The GEX Flip Level: The regime boundary. Price above it means dealers are stabilizing. Price below it means dealers are amplifying. Note whether SPX is currently above or below the flip and how close it is.
- The AI Analysis summary: Read the plain-English output for specific levels and directional bias. This takes thirty seconds and often saves you several minutes of manual interpretation.
Write down the Anchor, Flip, and GEX Rating for SPX on a sticky note or in a notes app. Having these numbers visible without reopening DealerEdge during the session keeps you oriented when things move quickly. For a deeper walkthrough of reading the heatmap, see the DealerEdge Quick Start.
Step 3: Scan AlgoEdge and OptionFlow (5 minutes)
Open AlgoEdge and scan the morning activity. Filter for your watchlist tickers and look for any alerts that fired since yesterday's close or in the pre-market session. An AlgoEdge alert on a name that also showed relative strength overnight is the beginning of a potential setup, not yet a trade.
Switch to OptionFlow. Apply a starter filter: premium above $100K, expiration under 30 days, and sweep execution. Watch the feed for two to three minutes and note which tickers appear multiple times. A ticker that shows up once is noise. A ticker that shows up three or four times in the same direction within twenty minutes is worth adding to your watchlist for the open.
Click any interesting contract to open the Contract Drilldown. Check the Net Premium pane: is net call premium rising above the zero line, or is it flat and choppy? Rising and sustained net premium tells you the flow is consistent and directional. Choppy or flat net premium in both directions suggests the tape is mixed and the single prints you saw may not represent conviction. See the OptionFlow Quick Start for a full walkthrough of this process.
Step 4: Check NewsEdge for Catalysts on Your Names (3 minutes)
For every ticker that appeared in your AlgoEdge or OptionFlow scan, run it through NewsEdge. You are looking for a reason: earnings, guidance, analyst action, partnership, regulatory news, or a sector-level catalyst that lifts a group of names. Relative strength or heavy flow without any catalyst can fade when the algo programs that created it finish their work. A catalyst gives the move something to lean on.
If a name has strong flow, is in a sector with a positive catalyst, and DealerEdge positioning supports the direction, that is a real candidate. If it has strong flow and nothing else, keep it on a secondary list and watch but do not prioritize it.
Step 5: Build Your Final Watchlist (5 minutes)
Add tickers to your active watchlist only when at least three edges align:
- Relative strength or weakness pre-market versus the broader market
- A NewsEdge catalyst that explains the strength or weakness
- DealerEdge positioning that supports or at least does not contradict the direction
- AlgoEdge or OptionFlow activity confirming institutional interest
If three or more of these are present, add the name. If only one is present, do not add it, regardless of how compelling that one signal seems in isolation. A watchlist with four or five confirmed names is more useful than a watchlist with fifteen marginal ones. You cannot monitor fifteen names at the open without losing discipline on all of them.
Market Open: The First Thirty Minutes (9:30 to 10:00 AM ET)
The opening thirty minutes of the session are the highest-volatility period of the day. Prices gap, algorithms rush to fill orders, and the tape moves faster than almost any other period. Unless you have a specific and well-practiced strategy for trading the open, your job in the first five minutes is to watch, not act.
Recheck DealerEdge at 9:35 AM
GEX data updates after the open as overnight options trades are processed. Recheck DealerEdge at 9:35 AM to confirm that the levels you noted pre-market are still valid. Occasionally a large open-interest change shifts the Anchor or Flip materially. If the levels held, your pre-market plan stands. If they shifted, take sixty seconds to update your notes before the real action starts.
Pay particular attention to whether price opened above or below the Flip Level. That tells you immediately whether you are in a stabilizing or amplifying regime for this session. Adjust your expectations accordingly: in a stabilizing regime, fade moves toward the Anchor; in an amplifying regime, follow the momentum and be slower to fade.
Map Your Levels
On the one-hour chart, mark the following levels for each of your watchlist names:
- Key support and resistance from the past five to ten sessions
- The DealerEdge Flip Level and Anchor Point
- VWAP (if your charting platform shows it)
- Your target zone and where you would exit if wrong
These levels do not have to be precise to the penny. They give you orientation so that when price approaches them, you are not making decisions from scratch under pressure.
Wait for an Entry Trigger
Drop to the three-minute or five-minute chart and watch for one of three entry patterns:
- Opening Range Breakout: Price breaks the high or low of the first five-minute candle in the direction supported by your DealerEdge read. The breakout holds and the next candle confirms it.
- GEX Retest: Price breaks above or below a DealerEdge level, pulls back to test it from the other side, holds, and resumes the initial direction.
- VWAP Retest: Price pulls back to VWAP, finds support or resistance there consistent with the DealerEdge bias, and resumes direction.
Do not force an entry. If the trigger does not develop cleanly, skip the trade. The three-tool-confirmation framework for entries is covered in detail in Three-Tool Confirmation.
Midday: 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM ET
After the opening range resolves, the session typically settles into a more deliberate pace. This is your best window for managing open trades, monitoring the tape for new setups, and using Cortex to check in on the broader picture.
If you have open trades, review them against your original thesis rather than against your current P&L. The question is not "am I up or down?" It is "does the original reason for the trade still hold?" If DealerEdge still supports the direction, OptionFlow is still consistent, and the chart has not broken a key level, the trade stands. If any of those three have changed materially, consider trimming or exiting.
New setups can develop through midday, particularly after 10:30 AM when the initial volatility subsides. Run any new name through the same pre-market process before adding it: catalyst, DealerEdge, OptionFlow, chart levels. Midday setups on names that were not on your pre-market watchlist require extra scrutiny, because you are making decisions with less preparation time.
For risk management principles that apply throughout the session, the Risk Management Overview covers position sizing, stop-loss discipline, and scaling out at targets.
Afternoon and Close: 2:00 to 4:00 PM ET
Theta decay accelerates sharply in the final two hours of the session, especially for short-dated options. If you are holding 0DTE contracts, exit everything by 2:00 PM unless the trade is in strong profit and you have a specific reason to hold. Holding into the final hour of a 0DTE position for a small additional gain rarely justifies the theta cost or the risk of a late-day reversal.
Use the last thirty minutes before the close to set up for tomorrow. Scan OptionFlow for any end-of-day sweeps on your existing watchlist names. Large sweeps placed in the final thirty minutes of the session often reflect genuine directional conviction rather than intraday noise, because the buyer cannot monetize the position until the next session.
Evening Review: The Close of the Loop
The daily system only works if you close the loop every evening. Set aside fifteen to twenty minutes after the close for this. Do not skip it on losing days. Those are the days where it matters most.
Log every trade in the Dashboard: ticker, direction, size, entry price, exit price, and a brief note on the setup and outcome. Then answer three questions honestly:
- Did I follow my process, or did I deviate from the pre-market plan?
- If I lost, was it because the process failed or because I skipped a step?
- What would I do differently tomorrow?
Write tomorrow's preliminary watchlist based on any tickers that showed strong end-of-day flow, relative strength into the close, or are reporting earnings before tomorrow's open. Pre-market scanning is faster when you already have a starting list.
Over weeks and months, your Dashboard statistics will tell you the answer to the most important question in trading: does your edge actually exist? If your win rate and profit factor are improving as you refine the system, keep going. If they are flat or declining despite following the process, bring that data to the Risk Management Overview and review your position sizing and setup selection criteria.
A Note on Patience
The daily system will occasionally produce a watchlist of zero names. Every edge fails to align on some sessions. The right response to a day with no confirmed setups is to trade nothing, review the tools, and log the observation. Forcing trades on days with weak confirmation is how small losses become large ones.
A useful target when you are starting out is two to three high-quality trades per week rather than two to three per day. Quality of confirmation matters far more than frequency of action. Your Dashboard will show this clearly over time: your best weeks by P&L are usually not your highest-activity weeks.
Where to Go Next
For the specific confirmation criteria that make an entry high-conviction, see Three-Tool Confirmation. For tool-specific setup guides, the OptionFlow Quick Start and DealerEdge Quick Start cover the two tools you will use most frequently. For position sizing and stop discipline, the Risk Management Overview is the natural next read.