First, before the trading day starts, or even on the previous day, we recommend taking a look at the Seasonality Tab. This shows the historic performance of the last 30 years of SPY per calendar date. While Seasonality is a weaker force in the market, it’s good to give a general directional bias for the day.
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If you’re just getting started, we recommend looking at the SF Segregated chart.

In the upper left corner, you can search by ticker and date. We have performant 5 minute charts for all tickers for the S&P500 and Nasdaq going back six years.
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In the upper right corner, you can see the current values for SmartFlow and MomoFlow. Under that, you can see all of our chart tools. Here, you can zoom in, draw lines, change your chart settings, use the tool tip to view all current values in a static, moveable and resizable pane, and see all option flow detail. You can see a description of all chart settings by hovering over the info icon. We offer these options because every trader has their own preference, for new users we recommend using the Recommended Settings.
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In my examples I’ll be going over how to trade with SPY. For other tickers, look at the historical 5 minute chart to determine whether the stock is omo or smart controlled, and what the meaningful Momo/NOF levels are.
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The first pane is the Candlestick Pane. Here we display dark pool prints directly on the chart, so you can easily see support and resistance levels. Price action is the number one indicator, that’s why it’s the biggest pane. Dark Pools are our number two indicator. When there are a lot of dark pools clustered around the same price range, or big dark pools, above the current price this level acts as resistance, and below the current price this level acts as support.

The second pane is SmartFlow. Since this is the new user guide, just disregard this pane for now.

The third pane is MomoFlow.

Pay attention here. Momo is a proxy for dumb money, and so MomoFlow is an inverse indicator. The shadow bar is MomoFlow for a given 5 minute bar, and the red line is the accumulation of MomoFlow throughout the day. If you see a big shadow bar pointing down, that means momo is dumping, and market makers are buying the dump. Think of it as a seesaw: the more the momo majority is on one side, the less room there is for a further move in that price direction, and the more incentive market makers have to take price in the opposite direction.

Scaling is important, especially in the beginning of the day, because the pane will resize to fit the bars, so be sure to check the absolute value of MomoFlow and compare it to historical norms. The larger the better.
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It’s also good to see multiple shadow bars pointing in the same direction in succession, this strengthens the signal.
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The fourth pane is OptionFlow. Be sure to have our beta feature, Net Option Flow (NOF), turned on in your chart settings. You should see purple and blue hills, pointing both up and down.

Scaling is important, especially in the beginning of the day, because the pane will resize to fit the bars, so be sure to check the absolute value of NOF and compare it to historical norms.
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Traditional option volume registers 1 million contracts bought and 1 million contracts sold as the same. Net Option Flow differentiate between buys and sells, with buys pointing up and sells pointing down. This implies a directional bias. If options are being bought, they point up, if options are being sold, they point down. In general, buying calls and selling puts are bullish, selling calls and buying puts are bearish.

Traditional option volume also doesn’t account for the amount of money going into the trades that comprise it. With options volume, 1000 contracts bought for 1 cent registers the same as 1000 contracts bought for $10. With Net Option Flow, we weigh the latter 1000x more heavily. We also deduct the buys and sells from each other, whereas traditionally, they are just all added up to create option volume. This is a novel approach for displaying options flow that reveals the net dollar-weighted reality.
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This green NOFA line shows the overall options sentiment for a given time period, and tracks whether there are more dollars flowing into bullish or bearish positions. If the green line is above zero on a 5min chart, this means that the net sum of past options trades throughout the day is positive. If the green line is below zero, this means that the net sum of past options trades throughout the day is negative. We can also observe the magnitude of movements in the green NOFA line to see how big the current flow is relative to what occurred prior. We can think of NOFA as an accumulation of inventory (positive or negative) throughout the day, which has longer term implications than the bar by bar NOF (net option flow for 1 candle). Read more about Net Option Flow here.
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One theory to keep in mind as you start trading, is that for both Net Option Flow and MomoFlow, when the indicator trends hard in one direction for a while, when things start to go in the opposite direction, that opposite direction move tends to be outsized. The theory is that if one side gets too crowded, a reversal can be triggered by a much smaller volume.
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Imagine there are two opponents pushing against a ball. One opponent is exerting with 100% of their strength, and eventually tires out. Once they’re tired, the other opponent can be easily overcome with much less strength than was required before the first opponent became tired.

UltraFlow SimSearch shows the 5 trading days with the most similar price action to today’s, and shows how those days played out. It activates after the first 30 minutes of the day and then updates every 2 seconds. It’s good to keep the SimSearch chart open in another window to see the potential patterns of the day. Read more about SimSearch here.

When trading, look for directional alignment in as many indicators as possible, and be cautious when the indicators conflict.
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If you’re a new trader, start by focusing just on price action, dark pool prints, NOF and shadow bars. Avoid trading power hour (the last hour of trading) as that's when a lot of dumb money and blind institutional money flood the market, so anything goes. Master these before you move on to the Advanced Guide, which is coming soon.