Cortex Flow
A practical guide to every setting: the user level, the dials that change how it behaves, and how to set up alerts. The concepts and terminology are in the separate PDF.
The 4 levels
At the very top of the settings there is a group called ⭐ START HERE with a single dropdown, User level. That control decides what gets drawn on the chart and how much information the panel shows.
For anyone still learning. A clean chart: only what you need to know where the market is going, where the zone worth waiting for is, and whether it is worth it or not. The panel has 9 rows and ends with a sentence that sums up the situation.
You already read structure. It adds BOS (breaks of structure), session bottoms, two more zones and the Fibonacci levels that are actually used to enter: 0.618 and 0.786.
Everything on: FVG, CHoCH, Order Blocks from another timeframe, the seven Fibonacci levels and the full panel with every statistic.
You choose switch by switch. The hundred-plus classic settings take over again. If you already had your own saved configuration from an earlier version, pick this level to get it back.
| Element | BEGINNER | INTERMEDIATE | ADVANCED |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cortex line and colored candles | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| BUY / SELL labels | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Order Blocks (zones) | 2 nearest | 4 nearest | all |
| Shaded OTE zone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Numbered Fibonacci lines | No | 0.618 & 0.786 | all 7 |
| Fair Value Gaps (FVG) | No | No | Yes |
| BOS / CHoCH | No | BOS only | BOS + CHoCH |
| Session bottoms | No | Yes | Yes |
| Other-timeframe zones | No | No | Yes |
| EMA / SMA moving averages drawn | No | No | optional |
| Panel rows | 9 | 15 | all |
Settings you can touch
Double-click the indicator name on the chart to open the settings. The groups appear in this order.
The three dials that matter most
They live in 🎯 SIGNAL PRECISION and 📦 ZONE SIZE. These are the ones that really change how the indicator behaves, and they work at any level.
How decisively price has to close when it changes side for it to count as a signal. It is measured in multiples of the candle average move, so it adapts to each asset and timeframe on its own.
Tune it. Missing signals, lower it to 0.15. Still getting false ones, raise it to 0.40.
Candles that must pass before another signal is allowed. It avoids the classic BUY-SELL-BUY cluster that shows up when price shakes around.
Tune it. Very busy market, raise it to 8 or 10. Want to see them all, set it to 0.
The thickness limit of a zone, in multiples of the average move. If a zone comes out bigger, it is trimmed on the side price is going to enter. It is what avoids the giant box that used to cover the chart on low timeframes.
Tune it. Zones still large, lower it to 1.0. Trimmed too much, raise it to 2.5.
With this on, the zone runs from the open price to the close, without the wicks. It gives smaller boxes and tighter stops. Turn it off if you prefer the classic high-to-low criterion.
Gaps smaller than this are discarded as noise. Without this filter, on M1 and M5 the chart fills with gaps that mean nothing.
The label only appears when the candle finishes forming. Leave it on: turning it off brings back the signals that show mid-candle and then disappear.
The rest of the groups
| Group | What it is for |
|---|---|
| ⭐ START HERE | The level selector. The only control you need if you do not want to complicate things. |
| ORDER BLOCKS | Zone colors, labels, whether to show those from another timeframe and how many to see at once. The only inside the structure option deletes the zones left against the trend. |
| MARKET STRUCTURE | Pivot length decides how big a turn must be to count as a high or low. Higher means fewer points, but more important ones. |
| BOS / CHOCH | Show or hide the break and change-of-character labels. |
| FVG | Colors and labels of the gaps, and whether to show only those going with the trend. |
| SESSION A / B / C | Three configurable time bands with their name and color. By default A is the Asian one and the other two are off. |
| TIME ZONE | The time reference for the sessions. New York by default. |
| PANEL | Position, text size, light or dark theme, and the compact mode for mobile. |
| TECHNICAL CONFLUENCE | The periods of the seven indicators that vote. Only touch them if you know what you are doing: the defaults are the standard ones. |
| CORTEX ENGINE – core | The calculation of the main line. Do not modify it without reason: these values are validated with three years of real data. |
| CORTEX ENGINE – volatility | How the engine adapts when the market speeds up or calms down. |
| CORTEX ENGINE – style | Thickness, colors, transparency, whether to paint the candles and the size of the labels. The signals only with confluence switch is also here. |
| 🎯 FIBONACCI / OTE | Which levels to draw, colors, and maximum candles of the leg: if the measured impulse stretches more than that, the Fibonacci is considered expired and disappears instead of leaving you a useless drawing. |
Alerts
First, what is an alert?
It is a notification to your phone. Nothing more. It is not a Cortex thing, it is a TradingView feature. You tell it once, notify me when this happens, and TradingView watches the chart for you, day and night, even with your computer off. When it happens, your phone rings.
A real example
Imagine you open gold and the panel tells you ZONE OF INTEREST 4009.51 - 4010.30. But price is at 4,084. The zone that interests you is seventy-something dollars below. It could take three days to get there. What do you do?
You stare at the screen three days in a row waiting to see if it drops. Impossible.
You create the OB Retest alert and close the computer. Three days later your phone buzzes: price touched an active Order Block on XAUUSD. You open TradingView and look.
What an alert does not do
And why are there twenty?
Because there are twenty different things you might want to be told about. Do not create all twenty. Create the two or three that actually matter to you. If you create many, the phone rings all day and you end up silencing it, which is the same as having none.
How to create one, step by step
- Right-click on the chart, then Add alert.
- In Condition, choose CORTEX FLOW. In the dropdown next to it, the alert you want from the list below.
- In Options, choose Once per bar close.
- Name it if you want and press Create. It stays working until you delete it.
The full list of 20 alerts
First column: the exact name to look for in TradingView. Second: the exact message you receive. Third: what it means.
| Name in TradingView | Message you receive | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Cortex BUY | «Cortex Capital switched to BULLISH (BUY) — with confluence» | The good one. It is the solid label: closed candle, with strength and everything aligned. |
| Cortex SELL | «Cortex Capital switched to BEARISH (SELL) — with confluence» | The same one but downward. |
| Cortex BUY by VOLUME | «buying money came in suddenly, but WITHOUT full confluence. Check the panel before trading» | It tells you something happened there, not that it will go up. It is a data point, not a green light. |
| Cortex SELL by VOLUME | «same, with selling money» | The same in reverse. |
| Any BUY | «BUY signal (confluence or volume)» | Fires with the two buys together. Use it if you do not want to create two alerts. |
| Any SELL | «SELL signal (confluence or volume)» | The same for sells. |
| Name in TradingView | Message you receive | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| OTE Confluence | «🔥 high-probability ENTRY: price in OTE + structure + Cortex + technicals aligned» | If you only create one alert, create this one. It is the cleanest situation the indicator detects. |
| OTE Bullish | «Price entered the OTE zone (0.618-0.786) in a BULLISH trend» | Price just reached the retracement zone. |
| OTE Bearish | «...in a BEARISH trend» | The same in a bearish trend. |
| Name in TradingView | Message you receive | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| OB Retest | «Price touched an active Order Block» | One of the most useful. It tells you when price comes back to a zone you were watching. |
| New Bullish OB | «New bullish Order Block» | A buy zone has just been marked. |
| New Bearish OB | «New bearish Order Block» | A sell zone has just been marked. |
| New FVG | «New Fair Value Gap» | A price gap just opened. |
| FVG Mitigated | «Fair Value Gap mitigated (fully filled)» | Price already came back and filled that gap. |
| Name in TradingView | Message you receive | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Bullish BOS | «Bullish BOS: break of structure to the upside» | It broke the last top and the trend continues. |
| Bearish BOS | «Bearish BOS: break of structure to the downside» | It broke the last bottom and keeps falling. |
| Bullish CHoCH | «Bullish CHoCH: change of character to the upside» | It was falling and broke upward. It may be turning. |
| Bearish CHoCH | «Bearish CHoCH: change of character to the downside» | It was rising and broke downward. |
| Bullish Confluence | «Strong BULLISH confluence (structure + technicals)» | Structure and the indicators strongly agreed to the upside. |
| Bearish Confluence | «Strong BEARISH confluence (structure + technicals)» | The same to the downside. |
Quick fixes by symptom
You are on Advanced or Custom level. Set User level to Beginner: you will see only the two zones nearest to price.
Usually one of three. One: you are on a very low timeframe, switch to H1. Two: the confluence filter is on in CORTEX ENGINE style (signals only with confluence); you can turn it off, though it is not recommended. Three: lower Minimum close strength to 0.15.
Check that Show unbacked BUY/SELL too is off (📊 VOLUME TURNS group). If there are still many, raise Wait between signals to 8 or 10 candles and Minimum close strength to 0.40. On M5 price turns far more than on H1, so the timeframe is the most common cause.
It is not lost. Set User level to Custom and all your saved switches take over again.
It needs a clean impulse to measure. If the panel says Range (invalid swing) it comes back on its own with the next impulse. You can also widen maximum leg candles in 🎯 FIBONACCI / OTE so a long leg is not discarded.
Cortex Flow is a technical analysis tool. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee results. Trading leveraged markets carries the risk of losing the invested capital. Decisions and their consequences are the responsibility of the person trading.
