Lesson 3 — Top-down

The most common beginner mistake is starting with a stock. A stock is the last thing you look at.

The order

1. Futures set the tone. ES, NQ, YM, RTY on the timeframes that matter today. Are they agreeing with each other and with their own higher timeframes?
2. Indices confirm. SPY, QQQ, DIA, IWM. If futures and indices agree, you have the direction of least resistance.
3. Sectors show where money is rotating. The eleven sector ETFs on the same timeframes, plus Market Strength for the ranking. You're looking for the sectors carrying the market's direction — or diverging from it.
4. Stocks are chosen from inside the strongest (or weakest) sectors. A stock whose signal matches its sector's signal has the stack behind it.

Then, and only then, a scanner — to find specific setups inside the names your top-down pointed at.

The gates before all of that

• Landmines — the economic calendar and today's earnings. Not to avoid volatility; to know where it's scheduled.
• Which timeframes open next — the ones that are about to open are the actionable ones. A signal on a timeframe that just opened has the whole period to play out.

Why the app makes you do it in order

Daily Prep is this lesson as a guided flow: seven steps, each deep-linking to the tool that serves it, ending with candidates on your watchlist. The screener is locked to step seven because members who skip to it take setups with nothing behind them.

Do this today

Run the order by hand, without the flow: futures, indices, sectors, then two or three stocks from the leading sector. Write one sentence per level. Under twenty minutes. Then run Daily Prep and compare.

Next: Lesson 4 — Reversals and continuations.