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The pre-trade checklist

Lesson 23 · about 8 min

The course ends with one page. Everything in the previous twenty-two lessons collapses into a sequence of questions, and the value of a checklist is not that it contains anything new; it is that it forces you to answer the questions in order, before the trade, when the answers are still uncomfortable.

Copy it, edit the numbers to match your own tested rules, and keep it where you can see it while trading.

Part A: Before the session (once)

Done when nothing is happening. Ten minutes on the day's chart or the week's.

  1. Context timeframe trend label: up / down / range / undefined, using swing points with N = ___.
  2. Trading timeframe trend label, same method.
  3. Do they agree? If not, write which direction, if any, is tradeable today.
  4. Major swing levels marked as zones (N = 10): the nearest one above and below.
  5. Minor swing levels (N = 3) inside them.
  6. Calendar levels for the session: PDH, PDL, PDC, PWH, PWL, session open, nearest round numbers.
  7. Average range on the trading timeframe over the last 10-20 candles: ___. Buffer (20%): ___.
  8. Every level on the chart has a one-sentence trapped-group story. Delete the rest.
  9. Total lines on the chart: ___ (target: eight or fewer).

Part B: When price reaches a level (per setup)

Answered when price arrives, before any candle has finished forming.

  1. Which level is this, and which trapped group does it hold?
  2. Is the trade direction with the context timeframe? If against it, is this a range edge on the context timeframe? If neither, stop here.
  3. Which setup is this: breakout and retest / failed breakout / pullback to level? If it fits none, stop here.
  4. Was this level drawn before price got here? If you are drawing it now, stop here.

Part C: When the candle closes (per setup)

  1. Signal candle passes a Module 2 definition by measurement, not by eye: engulfing (body covers body) / pin bar (wick ≥ 2× body and ≥ 60% of range) / inside bar break / close back across the level. Which one: ___.
  2. Signal candle's extreme (the price where the story breaks): ___.
  3. Entry: ___ (confirmation: break of the signal candle's high or low).
  4. Stop: extreme ± buffer = ___.
  5. Target: next level on the map = ___.
  6. Risk = |entry − stop| = ___. Reward = |target − entry| = ___. R:R = ___.
  7. R:R ≥ 1.5? If not, stop here.
  8. Break-even win rate = 1 ÷ (1 + R:R) = ___. Is your measured win rate for this setup above it? If you have no measured win rate, this is a paper trade.
  9. Pre-entry line written in the log, every field filled.

Part D: After the trade (per trade)

  1. Outcome in realized R: ___.
  2. Followed the rules: yes / no. If no, which rule and why.
  3. Which of the three errors (hindsight, over-marking, ignoring context) was present, if any.
  4. One sentence on what the market did that the setup did not anticipate.

The condensed version

For the trading screen, once the long version is a habit:

  CONTEXT   up / down / range / undef      TRADING  up / down / range / undef   agree? Y/N
  LEVEL     ______  trapped group: __________________   drawn before? Y/N
  SETUP     B&R / failed BO / pullback
  CANDLE    engulf / pin / inside-break / close-back    measured? Y/N
  ENTRY ____  STOP ____  TARGET ____  RISK ____  REWARD ____  R:R ____  (>=1.5?)
  BE% ____   my win rate ____   above BE? Y/N

If any line is blank, the trade is not taken. That is the whole rule.

Key idea: A checklist does not find trades. It stops you from taking the ones that are not there. Most of the improvement from this course comes from the setups you no longer take.

How to use it for the first month

  • Week 1: Part A only, every session. Get the map right before caring about entries.
  • Week 2: Parts A and B. Write down every level touch and whether it qualified, without trading.
  • Week 3: Parts A through C on paper, alongside the 50-chart backtest from Lesson 1.
  • Week 4: Part D on the paper trades. Find your habitual error.

Only after a positive-expectancy backtest and a month of paper trades that followed the checklist does live trading with small size make sense, and sizing is the subject of the Risk Management course, which this checklist hands over to at step 19.

Where to go next

  • The Risk Management course: from the stop distance here to a position size, a risk plan and a trade log measured in R.
  • The Reading Charts course: volume, moving averages and a few indicators as additional context, once the structure reading here is automatic.
  • Your own backtest folder: the comparisons from Lesson 1 are the material that turns a course into a method.

Try it: Print the condensed checklist, or copy it into a note on your trading screen. For the next five setups you see, fill it in completely before doing anything else, including the ones you decide to skip. Keep the five filled-in copies. In a month, read them again and see which lines you were tempted to leave blank.

Recap

  • Part A is the map, done once per session before anything happens: trends, levels, average range, and a story per line.
  • Part B is the gate when price reaches a level: which level, which trapped group, with the context, which setup, drawn beforehand.
  • Part C is the arithmetic when the candle closes: measured pattern, entry, stop with buffer, target, R:R of at least 1.5, break-even win rate versus measured.
  • Part D is the review: realized R, rules followed or not, which error was present.
  • Any blank line means no trade; the course's main product is the trades you stop taking.

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

The parts of a candlestickAn up candle and a down candle with the same high and low, labelled with open, high, low, close, the real body and the wicks.UP CANDLEclose above openHigh 41.00Close 40.30Open 38.20Low 37.40upper wickreal bodyopen to closelower wickDOWN CANDLEclose below openHigh 41.00Open 40.30Close 38.20Low 37.40Same high and low; only the open and close swap places.
The parts of a candlestick. One candle sums up a slice of time: the thick real body runs from the opening price to the closing price, and the thin wicks reach out to the highest and lowest prices traded. Colour tells you which way the body ran.
A range beside a trendOne chart swinging between a flat floor and ceiling, another stepping upwards inside a pair of sloping lines.Range-boundresistancesupportprice bounces between two levelsTrendingthe trend channelhigher highs and higher lowsA range has two flat edges; a trend has two sloping ones.
Range versus trend. On the left price keeps bouncing between the same floor and ceiling, which is a range. On the right each high and each low is higher than the last, inside a pair of sloping lines called a channel.
One daily candle broken into four six-hour candlesA tall daily candle on the left and the four six-hour candles that make it up on the right, with dashed lines linking the day's open to the first candle and the day's close to the last.ONE DAILY CANDLEFOUR 6-HOUR CANDLEScloseopenhighlow=00:0006:0012:0018:00one dayThe same trading, summed up in one bar or spelled out in four.
How timeframes stack up. A daily candle is not different data, only coarser data: it opens where the first six-hour candle opened, closes where the last one closed, and its wicks reach the highest and lowest prices any of the four touched.

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This lesson is educational content only. It is not financial, legal or tax advice, and hypothetical examples are not indicative of future results. Trading involves risk of loss.

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