Trading Checklist
A pre-trade checklist that takes under a minute and catches the majority of avoidable mistakes.
Before the session
Three minutes of preparation decides most of the day's execution quality.
- Higher-timeframe condition written in one sentence
- Levels marked, alerts set
- Daily loss limit and maximum trade count confirmed
- Scheduled economic releases noted
Before each entry
Every box must be checkable without interpretation.
- Does a written condition match?
- Is the trigger present, not anticipated?
- Where exactly is invalidation, and why there?
- Position size calculated from fixed risk?
- Reward to the nearest obstacle recorded?
After the session
Capture fields, not narrative, so the week can be reviewed in minutes.
- Setups that matched versus trades taken
- Deviations, with a one-word tag
- Result in units of risk
- One observation