Quarterly Theory: From Zero to Mastery | Ep.1

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Hey guys, how are you? How's it going?

[00:00:02]And welcome to the very first episode of the quarterly series series from scratch. Every video in this series will cover quartly series step by step beginning to end. Today we'll be covering the introduction to quarterly theory. What it is and how it works.

[00:00:17]This video will split into two parts.

[00:00:20]The first part which you're watching right now on YouTube is completely free.

[00:00:25]The full video with additional information will be posted for Discord premium members for those who want to learn quarterly theory on a deeper level. All the links are going to be in the description. So let's get started.

[00:00:41]So what is quartly theory? The quarterly theory is a timebased trading framework created by trader day. The core idea is simple. Every significant time period on the chart divides into four quarters and each quarter has a specific purpose.

[00:00:58]Most traders focus only on price. Where is upward? Where is resistance? But without understanding when price is supposed to move, you're essentially trading blind. QT solves that. Gives you clear timebased reference points. So you always know what the market is most likely doing right now and what is about to do next. When you combine quartly theory with ICT concept, you stop guessing and start anticipating. So quarterly theory is a timebased framework for reading market and cycles.

[00:01:32]Every time period divides into four quarters. Corly theory eliminates guesswork and gives you exact timing for entries. And what are we doing? We're basically blending quartly series time with ICT price.

[00:01:49]So let's talk about how time is divided in the quarterly series. Now every time period from a full year down to a single trading session split into four quarters starting with the biggest the yearly cycle. In the yearly cycle Q1 is going to be the January, February and March.

[00:02:11]Q2, April, May and June. Q3 July, August and September. Q4, October, November, December. The next cycle is a monthly cycle when in each month splits into four weeks. Week one is Q1, week two is Q2, week three is Q3, week four is Q4.

[00:02:39]Important to understand that in a monthly cycle Q1 starts from the first full week of the month. The next cycle is a weekly cycle. When Monday is Q1, Tuesday Q2, Wednesday Q3 and Thursday Q4. The Friday is in the quarter. Friday has its own unique crawl. It doesn't count as a quarter in the weekly cycle.

[00:03:08]Now, the daily cycle, a trading day splits into four six-hour quarters. When Q1 is the Asia session from 6:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. Q2 is London from 12:00 a.m.

[00:03:22]to 6:00 a.m. Q3 is New York. from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. And Q4 is a New York PM from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. The next cycle is the 90minut cycle when each daily quarter splits into four 90inut quarters. That's an hour and a half each. New York AM, for example, runs Q1 from 6:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. Q2 from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and Q3 from 9:00 a.m.

[00:03:57]to 10:30 a.m. Q4 from 10:30 to 12:00 p.m. Applies the same logic to every single trading session. So the Asia session is going to be split into four quarters as well as London session and New York PM session. And finally the micro cycle when each 90 minute quarter divides into four again giving you roughly 22.5 minute micro quarters. The micro cycle is the most cranial level useful for precision entries on the lower time frames. Personally me I'm an intraday trader. So I focus mainly on the daily and the 90minut cycle. That's where I find my setups.

[00:04:45]Okay, now let's talk about the true opens. One of the most important concepts in the quarterly series. The true open is the opening price of Q2 in every cycle. And every single cycle has its own true open session, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly cycles. Let me quickly break them all down for you.

[00:05:06]The yearly true open is the first Monday of April. The monthly true open is the second Monday of the month. Weekly true open Monday at 6:00 p p.m. So every single week the Monday at 6:00 p.m.

[00:05:22]That's where we want to look for our true week open. And the daily true open is a midnight which is 12 a.m. and shows up every single day. So every single day you want to go to the very first candle of Q2 that shows up by 12:00 a.m. and look for our true day open and the session true open the opening price of the second 90minut quarter within each session.

[00:05:52]Now here is why it matters. The true open acts as a timebased premium and discount levels. If price is above the true open, we are in a premium zone and from the premium we expect price to reverse lower. If price is below the true open, we are in a discount and from discount we expect price to reverse higher. And then now how do we actually use this? If you come into the new cycle with a bullish bias, you want to see price dip down below the true open first take out some liquidity below Q1 lows and then begin moving towards our drawing on liquidity. The deep below the true day open is a manipulation phase that is your signal to start looking for an entries. And then personally the two true opens I use the most are the true day open and the true week open alone gives me an extra confences to determine my bias for the day. And the final key rule is high probability PD race will overlap with the true opens. So when you see a fair value gap on an order block sitting right at the drop open levels there are high probability PD rates.

[00:07:17]Now the next thing that we want to cover is the quarters function. In a quarterly theory every single quarter has a job and by applying if then logic we can anticipate what the market is most likely to do next. If Q1 consolidates, then Q2 will likely manipulate. If Q2 manipulates, then Q3 will likely distribute. And if Q3 distributes, then Q4 will likely be a continuation or a reversal. Now, there is the opposite scenario, and this is just as important.

[00:07:56]If Q1 expands, then Q2 will likely accumulate. If Q2 accumulates then Q3 will likely manipulate and if Q3 manipulates then Q4 will likely distribute. This is the XMD temple. The cycle is simply shifted by one quarter.

[00:08:18]Same logic different starting points and using if logic we can anticipate what the market is most likely to do next.

[00:08:30]ize all of these quarterly series cycles directly on the charts without drawing them manually. On the right side of the screen is a quarterly series indicator by da. You can find it on trading view.

[00:08:43]It displays color boxes below the chart.

[00:08:47]Each color represent a different quarter so you can instantly see which phase the market is currently in. The top row, the boxes show the 90 minute cycle. The bottom row show the larger daily cycles.

[00:09:02]In the settings, you can enable labels on the each box so you always know exactly which quarter you're looking at.

[00:09:10]This indicator saves a huge amount of time and keeps your chart clean and organized.

[00:09:17]And on the left side of the screen is my own indicator. The cycles here are fully synced to quarterly Siri time alignment.

[00:09:26]At the top you can see your current time frame and the cycle you're in. The indicator has custom labels for the monthly cycle. Quarters will be shown as Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. Going lower to weekly cycle cycles will be shown as days of the week. Monday as Q1, Tuesday Q2, Wednesday Q3 and Thursday Q4.

[00:09:54]Going down to the daily cycle, you'll be shown as session when Q1 is Asia, Q2 is London, Q3 New York, Q4 New York PM.

[00:10:06]This indicator also includes all of the quarterly series concepts that you need for trading QT, SS SMT, hidden SSMT, PSP, deceased, OT levels, and much more.

[00:10:20]You can get this indicator separately with 50% off right now on my official site. Link is in the description or by joining premium access. You get access to the indicator included as long as you have a SPAD premium access active.

[00:10:40]Now, let's talk about the two main market profiles in quarterly series AMDX and XMD. But first, why does any of this even exist? When the algorithm was designed, the whole point of it was to manipulate human behavior to these buyers and sellers into the market because they want to steal our money.

[00:11:04]And once you understand that, everything starts to make sense. So, let's break down each letter. A accumulation. This is where price consolidates in a tight range. Nothing exciting happens and most traders get bored and either don't trade or make mistakes. M manipulation. This is a Juda swing. Price fakes out in one direction. Takes out stops, crabs liquidity and then reverses. This is the algorithm trapping retail traders.

[00:11:39]Distribution.

[00:11:41]This is the real move. After the manipulation is done, price aggressively expands towards a drawing on liquidity.

[00:11:50]X expansion. This is either a continuation or a reversal of the previous cycle. Now we have two profiles. The first one is AMDX when Q1 accumulates, Q2 manipulates, Q3 distributes and Q4 is a continuation or reversal. And the second profile is X amd. When Q1 is continuation or reversal, Q2 accumulates, Q3 manipulates and Q4 distributes. Same for faces, just a different starting