The pre-market routine
Lesson 9 · about 8 min
The plan says what a trade is. The routine makes sure that when one appears, you are ready to take it correctly, and that when one does not appear, you are not tempted to invent one. A routine is a checklist run at the same time every day, in the same order, that ends with either "trading today, here are the levels" or "not trading today, here is why".
Why a routine and not just a plan
The plan is static. The market is not. Every day has its own levels, its own calendar, its own filter reading. The routine is where the static plan meets the specific day, and it has to be a fixed sequence for the same reason the plan has to be written: the version of you that runs it at 9:05am is not the version that wrote it.
A routine also removes the first decision of the day, which is "am I trading?" The answer is whatever the checklist produces. On days the filter fails, you close the platform and do something else, and that is not a missed opportunity; it is the plan working.
The checklist
Thirty minutes before your session, or the evening before for a swing trader. Every item is written on the pre-market sheet, which lives in the journal.
| # | Item | Output on the sheet |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Account balance vs. the plan's account basis | Balance; 1R in dollars |
| 2 | Loss limits: R lost so far this day / week / month | Remaining R before each stop |
| 3 | Calendar: scheduled data, earnings, holidays, expiries | List; no-trade windows in your time |
| 4 | Filter reading | Value; PASS or FAIL |
| 5 | Levels the setup depends on (overnight range, prior day high/low, MAs) | Numbers, marked on the chart |
| 6 | Open positions: stop, invalidation, time-stop deadline | Confirmed in the platform |
| 7 | Physical state: sleep, mood, anything unusual | One word; a rule if it is "bad" |
| 8 | Decision | TRADING or NOT TRADING, and why |
Item 2 is the one people skip and the one that matters most. If the weekly stop is 4R and you are 3.5R down on Wednesday morning, you have half an R to trade with, which means one trade at half size or none. Knowing that before the open, not after the first loss, is the whole point.
Item 7 sounds soft. It is not. Write a rule for it: "If sleep under 5 hours or mood is 'angry' or 'desperate', trade at half size or not at all." The risk management course covered tilt after it starts; this catches it before.
Key idea: The routine turns "am I trading today?" into a checklist output instead of a feeling. If the sheet says NOT TRADING, the platform stays closed.
Sizing before the open
Once the filter passes and the levels are marked, size the trade in advance, at least approximately. If the setup typically has a stop of 8 ticks on MES and 1R is $112, that is about 11 contracts at $1.25 per tick, which is a lot for a $15,000 account and probably means the plan should say "max 5 contracts" as a hard cap. Finding that out before the open is calm. Finding it out with the entry bar closing is not.
The position size calculator does this in a few seconds. Run it with your typical stop distance every morning, so the number is fresh.
The post-market half
The routine has a second half, run at session end, before you leave the desk:
- Flat check: is every position that should be closed actually closed?
- Log every trade taken, with the fields from Module 4. Not "later". Now.
- Log every setup that appeared and was not taken, and why.
- One line of note: the single most important thing about today.
- Update the R counters for day, week and month.
Item 3 is where most of your plan-following data comes from. A missed valid setup is a plan-following error in the same way a trade outside the setup is, and it is invisible unless you record it.
Swing and options versions
For a daily-close swing plan, the routine runs at 3:45pm ET: check the screen, check filters, check open positions against trail and time stops, size tomorrow's orders, place them. Sunday runs the full screen and the weekly review. For an options plan, the pre-market is the IV rank check, the calendar, and the open-position review against the 50% and 21-DTE rules; entries happen in the session window the plan allows.
Try it: Write your own eight-item pre-market checklist on one side of a card and the five-item post-market one on the other. Tomorrow, run both and time them. If the pre-market takes over twenty minutes, something on it is analysis rather than routine; move it to the weekend.
Recap
- The routine is where the static plan meets the specific day. It runs at the same time, in the same order, every day.
- It ends with TRADING or NOT TRADING. Not trading on a filter-fail day is the plan working.
- Remaining R before each loss limit is computed before the open, not discovered after the first loss.
- Size before the open, with the calculator, so the contract count is never decided live.
- The post-market half logs every trade and every missed setup before you leave the desk.
See it drawn
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.