Frequently asked questions

Think of it as a research desk that never sleeps. Every market session our scanner reads thousands of US stocks, grades each setup A/B/C using the OdysseyHQ framework, and lays out the results next to the news, macro data, and filings that matter. You still make every decision — we just compress the hours you'd spend flipping through charts into one dashboard.

No. Nothing on this site is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Grades are pattern reads — a structured way of saying "this chart looks cleaner than that one" — not predictions, and definitely not instructions. Always do your own research, and never risk money you can't afford to lose.

Head to the Academy (the Learn Hub at /learn). It has short plain-English lessons, quizzes, flashcards, and games that use fake money — all free. Once the vocabulary clicks, open Grading to see the day's setups and tap any card to see exactly *why* it earned its grade.

Three good doors in: (1) News → Movers shows today's biggest gainers and losers with a grade attached, (2) Grading ranks the whole scanned universe by setup quality, (3) the Screener lets you filter the full coverage grid yourself. Click any ticker for the deep-dive page — chart, levels, valuation, and recent news in one place.

The price tape is roughly 5 minutes delayed — fine for research, but always confirm fills at your broker. The scanner refreshes through the trading day (pre-market, midday, and after the close), news briefs refresh hourly during market hours, and every page shows a timestamp so you know exactly when it was last updated.

A grade is our quick read on how clean a setup looks — like a teacher grading homework. A+ is best-of-the-day: multiple signals agreeing, roughly 3R potential, and the model's win odds at 65%+ (usually 0–2 per scan). A is a strong setup — clean trend, healthy reward-to-risk, several agreeing signals. B is decent but expect more chop; size down or wait for confirmation. C is speculative — the shape exists but the evidence is thin, so treat it as educational. Remember: an A can still lose and a C can still win. Grades are pattern reads, not predictions.

Every stock, every scan, lands in one of five buckets based on how far price has stretched from its 21-day average (measured in ATR volatility units). IN THE RIVER (within ±1 ATR of the average) is where fresh setups are graded — price is hugging the trend. STRETCHED (+1 to +3) means a healthy but extended uptrend: hold longs, don't chase. BLOW-OFF (+3 and above) is parabolic and unsustainable — chasing here is how accounts get hurt. PULLBACK (−1 to −3) mirrors STRETCHED on the downside. DEEP-PULL (−3 and below) is a capitulation-style flush where bounce odds are highest. The bell alerts you when a name flips into one of the two extreme buckets.

The framework pictures price as a river that wants to flow with the trend but constantly stretches and snaps back. The EMA21 (21-day exponential moving average) is the centerline of that river — trend direction comes from its slope. ATR (average true range) is a volatility yardstick: the average daily move, so a "1-unit stretch" means the same thing for a quiet stock and a wild one. Keltner channels are bands drawn at fixed ATR multiples above and below the EMA21 — price riding the outer upper band means STRETCHED heading to BLOW-OFF; piercing the outer lower band means PULLBACK heading to DEEP-PULL.

Regime is the character of the overall market, judged from SPY, QQQ and IWM together: RISK-ON (indices trending healthy — longs favored), NEUTRAL (chop — both sides in play), or RISK-OFF (indices stretched down or breaking — shorts favored). Confluence is how many independent signals point the same way at the same time — trend, momentum, volume, candle structure, support/resistance. More confluence, higher grade.

Placement is how you'd enter: at market, on a pullback, or on a breakout — the scanner picks whichever entry style gives the best risk-adjusted fill for the current zone. Setup type is the technical pattern triggering the idea: trend continuation, mean-reversion, range break, pullback-buy, and so on.

Long setups are reads that a stock may go up; short setups that it may go down. They use mirrored logic — longs look for pullbacks in uptrends, shorts for relief rallies in downtrends. Neither is 'better'. What matters is matching your account, capital, and broker permissions to the right side. You never have to touch the short side.

Volume confirms (or disconfirms) the move. A breakout on 3× average volume is real institutional buying; a breakout on average volume often fades by day two. Unusual volume plus a grade upgrade is one of the strongest combinations on the site.

Buying a call gives you the right (not the obligation) to buy 100 shares at the strike price before expiration. The most you can lose is the premium you paid. Profit grows without cap above the breakeven (strike + premium). It's the classic way to bet on upside with a known, limited downside.

Buying a put gives you the right to sell 100 shares at the strike before expiration. Max loss is the premium. Max profit is (strike − premium) × 100 — capped because a stock can't go below zero. Used to bet on downside, or as insurance on shares you own.

OTM (out-of-the-money) is a call struck *above* the current price (or a put struck below): cheaper, more leverage, but it needs a real move to pay off. ITM (in-the-money) is an option that already has intrinsic value — it costs more but tracks the stock more closely. The site shows one of each per setup so you can pick the flavor that fits the trade.

Intrinsic is the part of the premium backed by real moneyness — for a call, how far the stock already sits above the strike. Extrinsic is everything else: time value plus implied volatility, and it decays to zero at expiration. A high-extrinsic option is essentially a bet on movement before expiry; a high-intrinsic option behaves more like the stock.

Buy a lower-strike call AND sell a higher-strike call at the same expiry. The premium collected from the short call partly offsets the long one, so you get a defined max loss (the net debit) and a defined max profit ((width − debit) × 100). Used when you expect a moderate move up and want to lower the cost.

R is your initial risk per share (entry − stop), and the R-multiple is how many units of that risk the target is worth. A "2R" setup means risking $100 could pay $200. Anything under 2R is usually a pass — even with a 60% win rate, 1.5R doesn't cover the cost of the losers. 3R+ is what an OdysseyHQ 'A' grade aims for.

Use the % risk per trade calculator in /valuation. Enter your account size, the % you're willing to lose on this one idea (most pros cap at 1%), your entry, and your stop — it returns the share count. Risking more than 2% per trade is aggressive and mathematically hard to recover from on a losing streak.

Most of the site is free: the graded setups on the core large-cap universe (~280 names), news, the Academy's lessons and games, the calculators, and the podcast briefings. NBT Pro ($29/month) widens coverage to the full US market — every actively-traded stock, roughly 4,400 names — plus the members-only briefings, full trade levels, and every Pine Script included at no extra cost.

Any time, no phone calls, no guilt trip. Sign in, open /members → Manage billing, and cancel there — it's Stripe's own billing portal, so it takes about 30 seconds. Your access runs until the end of the period you already paid for.

Structured, self-paced trading courses at /courses — deeper than the free Academy lessons, written in the same plain-English style. Each is a one-time purchase you keep forever, and some are bundled free with NBT Pro. Buy one and it unlocks instantly under My Courses.

TradingView indicators we built on the OdysseyHQ framework — the same zones and bands the scanner uses, drawn live on your own charts. Each is a one-time purchase with lifetime access: buy one and the full Pine Script is emailed to you instantly — paste it into TradingView's Pine Editor and it's on your chart in about a minute. All of them are free with NBT Pro.

Not at all. The Academy, the FAQ, the candle-pattern library, the free daily newsletter, and the core graded universe are all free forever. Pro exists for active traders who want the full market covered — not as a paywall in front of learning.

No — you can browse the whole free tier signed out. A free account (create one at /members/signup) adds nice-to-haves: your Academy XP and streaks sync across devices, you can join the leaderboard, keep a watchlist, and manage email preferences. Pro is a separate upgrade on top.

Four ways, all equal: Continue with Google, Continue with Apple, a one-click email link (we email you a sign-in link — no password to remember), or classic email + password. Whichever you pick, your account is keyed to your email address, so you can switch methods freely.

As little as we can get away with. Signed out, the chat widget keeps your last conversation in your own browser's storage — nothing on our servers — and the calculators run entirely in your browser. With an account we store your email, your Academy progress, and (for Pro members) your billing status via Stripe. We never see your card number, and we don't track your trades.

First, make sure you're signed in with the same email you used at checkout. If it still doesn't show, use the /support form and include that email — we'll sort it out quickly.

A market order takes whatever price is available right now — fast, but it can slip in volatile names. A limit order names the worst price you'll accept; it may not fill, but it will never pay more than your limit. Use limits for anything off the most-liquid mega-caps.

A stop-loss is a pre-arranged exit that caps your loss if the trade goes against you. Common placements: just below the most recent swing low (for longs), below the EMA, below a key support level, or at a multiple of ATR. Without a stop, you don't have a trade — you have a hope.

Weeklies (0–7 days) are cheaper but decay brutally fast. Monthlys (30–45 days out) give the thesis time to play out. As a rule of thumb, beginners do better in monthlies because they don't have to be right on the exact day.

If your US account is under $25k and you make 4 or more day-trades (buy and sell the same day) within 5 business days, you'll be flagged PDT and restricted for 90 days. Workarounds: keep the account above $25k, hold positions overnight, or trade in a cash account where settlement rules govern instead.