Build a Trading Routine with MenthorQ Lesson

Building an effective trading routine starts with having the right structure and tools at your fingertips. In this lesson, we walk you through exactly how to set up your morning routine using MenthorQ, from monitoring market levels to analyzing key sentiment indicators that help you understand what’s happening before you place your first trade.

We start by showing you how to set up your watches and customize your watch list to monitor futures, indices, Max 7 companies, and individual stocks you’re tracking. You’ll learn to identify key levels like core resistance and hybrid levels, and understand momentum signals such as when a one minute candle approaches the one day max. Monitoring the VIX is critical—we show you how to track levels like the boot support zero DT at the 25 level, with the one day minimum at 24 and max at 26.

The dashboard is where your routine comes together. You can customize modules and position them however you want, including the NetGam exposure chart, multi expiration data for 0DT expirations, and open interest levels like the significant 5995 on SPX. The skew indicator reveals market sentiment—in this example, we moved from high put skew to the 11 percentile, the lowest level of the last 30 days, indicating a shift to a call bias environment. We also examine the matrix showing negative gamma exposure and important expirations like 21st of March OPEX with 25% of gamma expiring.

Understanding these indicators helps you anticipate market direction and manage risk. For example, monitoring DAX (which dictates market maker exposure direction), swing levels with the upper band at 5744 for five days and 5916 at 20 days, and red bars indicating bearish sentiment gives you concrete levels to watch. You can also track assets like SPY, QQQ, NQ, Yes, and RTY due to their high option volume.

The Q score brings together four critical factors: option, volatility, momentum, and seasonality. Option scores range from 1 (low) to 5 (high), while volatility and seasonality range from minus five to five. We show you how a drop in the options score preceded a massive downtrend, and how seasonality shifting from positive to neutral requires close monitoring. With volatility at the highest level, you know a strong move could be coming, while low momentum scores confirm bearish trends. You can apply these same analyses to individual stocks like Nvidia, and access supporting documentation in the guides section and training videos in the academy.

To complete your routine, monitor economic events like CPI data and track earnings during earnings season to understand momentum shifts. Once you set up your dashboard modules and watch lists, they stay configured for the whole day, week, or as long as you need them, making your daily routine efficient and consistent.

Video Chapters

00:00 – Introduction and market overview
00:48 – Setting up watches and watch lists
02:47 – Customizing the dashboard and modules
03:…

Video Transcription
[00:00:00.07] - Speaker 1
Foreign.
[00:00:13.04] - Speaker 1
Welcome Tim, to this live session on Wednesday. As always, today we're gonna start with just a briefly overview of what's going on in the market. Let's look at some levels and then of course Patrick is going to take charge and show you some live trading examples. But before we do that, we want to like just spend a couple of minutes looking at how you can build a trading routine or a morning routine with Mentor Q. So the first step that we always do in the morning is first of all let's go into our watches.
[00:00:48.05] - Speaker 1
So we set up our end of the indicator. We can also update with the intraday indicator here. But the first thing we want to do is look at the overall picture of what's going on in the market. So obviously we have created our watch list right here. We monitor our futures, we monitor our indices, we monitor our Max 7 companies, some stocks that we are monitoring that may be interesting for us to invest to trade, whether it's through direct stock buying or selling or with option strategies.
[00:01:18.01] - Speaker 1
But the first thing of course is looking at the overall market. So what we can see is that the NQ had a strong move in the morning. We crossed over our hybrid level here and then we went all the way through our core resistance with a strong momentum. Look at this candle here with the one minute almost at the one day max. And now we are kind of like pinning at this core resistance level.
[00:01:40.14] - Speaker 1
So obviously there's a strong momentum in the market. Very important to monitor. We can look at spx, but it's important to then move and look at the vix. The VIX is very key. So we want to monitor, for example, where is the Vix?
[00:01:56.10] - Speaker 1
So the Vix opened at 25. So we saw a big drop from the 26, 27 level that we closed yesterday. So now we are at the one, the minimum. It's going to be very interesting to add our intraday levels to see how this change throughout the day. So we can add our intraday levels here, update them.
[00:02:22.02] - Speaker 1
Then let's see how things have changed at the open. So very important, Right? So now we have our boot support zero DT on the Vix right there at this 25 level. Our one day minimum is now at 24 and I wonder, Max is at 26. So monitoring how the VIX is going, it's going to be very key.
[00:02:47.14] - Speaker 1
And then of course we can then move into the dashboard. So let's go into our dashboard. And the first thing of course that I do on the dashboard is I set up my watch list So I have my Vix, my SPX right here. I have some of the Max 7, some companies that I'm monitoring. I have some of the ETFs.
[00:03:04.12] - Speaker 1
I'm always looking at spy and QQQ and the reason is very simple. There's a lot of option volume on those assets. So monitoring what SPY and QQQ is doing together with SPX and NDX as well can be very important. And then of course some of the future data monitors. So we have nq, we have yes, RTY and so on.
[00:03:25.26] - Speaker 1
So let's go through how you can then customize the dashboard. So from at the top here you can look at all the different modules that we have and you can add them and customize them, you can move them around so you can put them wherever you want and, and basically set up your, your watches. I do this once and then that stays for me for the whole day. So for the whole week or whenever I, I want to use it. The first thing I want to work look for is our NetGam exposure chart.
[00:03:56.19] - Speaker 1
Of course you can already see that we're still quite buried inputs still. We see some positive positioning right here accumulating. But overall the picture is still kind of like negative. We look at the multi expiration so we want to see if the picture is the same across multiple expirations. So we look at the 0dt expirations.
[00:04:18.00] - Speaker 1
We are really, we have these levels here that is very, very strong. We can look at tomorrow's expiration and then we can look at the rest of the month here as well. In SPX we can see our open interest. So you can immediately see this very strong level 5995 on the SPX where we see a massive amount of open interest, the core on the put side. So monitoring that level could be important.
[00:04:44.17] - Speaker 1
The skew very, very nice. We can see basically how the skew has changed. This is the one month skew and is looking at out of the money calls and out of the money puts. And the idea behind it is that this is a sentiment indicator that can tell us if the market is expecting a sharp decline or a sharp upside. And as we can see what's interesting is that we are now in a call bias environment and we move down from very, very high put skew that was yesterday to almost like the 11 percentile.
[00:05:18.08] - Speaker 1
So now we are at the lowest of the last 30 days. So you see the green bar shows the lowest level of the SKU for the past 30 days. So from yesterday we've seen Like a kind of like decline in sku which obviously is a, could be a positive sentiment but things have not really changed much. So if we look at our matri we can still see that basically we are really heavily exposed to a negative gamma here. We see how this has changed from the previous day.
[00:05:51.05] - Speaker 1
We see the Dex and the Jacks and we also need to monitor some really important expiration. So we have our 21st of March OPEX where 25% of gamma is expiring on that on that week. And then of course this weekend on Friday about 9.2% of gamma is expiring. So obviously monitor those DAX very negative. So DAX is important because it can dictate the direction of the exposure that market maker might have.
[00:06:18.26] - Speaker 1
So looking at DAX can also be key. And next Monday we're going to show you with Dan how to use it and how to perfection it using the, the that exposure as well. And then of course our swing levels. So of course we are still, we see an upper band, we see our red bars here we are still in negative bearish sentiment coming from the option market. We want to monitor these 5744 level which is our upper band for five days.
[00:06:45.11] - Speaker 1
And then of course we have our 5916 at the 20 days levels. And then finally we want to monitor our Q score. So the Q score you can now find them at the top here we have four factors. Option volatility, momentum and seasonality. So monitoring those red of course the 1 is a low and 5 is high.
[00:07:09.01] - Speaker 1
And then volatility and seasonality, sorry goes from minus five to five and basically looking at those can help you understand if we are again we're in negative gamma, we are in a very low option environment. So still very high volatility. So we need to really pay close attention. So the market is up today, but still three from the option side we haven't really seen a shift. And then of course we can monitor the different scores historically.
[00:07:34.04] - Speaker 1
So as you can see the drop in our options score kind of like gave the start of this really massive downtrend, right? So now we're still kind of like stabilizing here. And then of course the seasonality. So what's interesting about the seasonality, we talked about it yesterday. If you look at this chart when the seasonality drop a few days before we saw then five or six days after the start of this big drop.
[00:07:59.12] - Speaker 1
And now we are kind of like we had a positive season 90 yesterday. Now we are neutral. So we need to monitor what this data does and how this change, because that could be a very important sign. And then of course volatility is at the highest. So we know that when volatility is very high, our volatility score, something could happen.
[00:08:18.14] - Speaker 1
So it could be a very strong move, whether it's to the upside or to the downside. So obviously we know that something could be triggered very, very soon. And then of course, our momentum, we are in a very low momentum, we're in a very strong downtrend, so we have a bearish momentum. So obviously monitoring how this could change could be very interesting. And then, yeah, and then we can do the same on our stock.
[00:08:40.17] - Speaker 1
So we can look at Nvidia and we can see similar picture. So as you can see, all the models are updated. We can look at qqq, we can look at spy. And basically this is really how we can kind of like build our routine. We can also find supporting documentation.
[00:09:01.17] - Speaker 1
So if you guys go to our guides, we have everything there. So if you want to learn more about our Q score and our Q models, you can find everything here. And then of course, the academy has all the videos and we're going to add more videos as we, as we go through. We're going to build more use cases, we're going to talk about volatility. So yeah, so we are going to add more.
[00:09:26.20] - Speaker 1
The next step is really looking at economic events. Of course, these are very important. So today we are on Wednesday looking at what's going to happen today, CPI data, what's going to happen later. And of course, monitoring our earnings whenever we are in the earnings season will be very key to understand momentum.