The nightly 15-minute check

The nightly check is the execution half of the process. It runs after the close, with the day's bar complete, and it has one purpose: make sure tomorrow's orders reflect the plan. It is not for finding new ideas, reading news, or reconsidering the regime. If it regularly takes more than 15 minutes, something that belongs on the weekend has leaked into the week.

The checklist

What "a valid close" means

Alerts fire intraday. A pullback trigger that touched the level at 11 am and closed back below it did not trigger. The nightly check is where you look at the finished bar and decide whether the condition was met at the close, with the volume required, with the day's high above the prior high. Only then does an entry order get prepared.

Alert fired 11:04   ->   close below trigger   ->   no entry, alert stays
Alert fired 14:30   ->   close above trigger,  ->   entry at open, sized from plan
                         vol 1.6x, higher high

This is the single biggest protection the timeframe gives you. A day trader reacts to the alert; a swing trader reacts to the close.

Preparing orders, not placing decisions

By the end of the check, every order for tomorrow is written down: ticker, side, size, order type, price, stop. In the morning, before the open, they are entered. Nothing is decided in the morning; the morning is for typing.

Entry orders for triggers that closed valid are usually market-on-open or a limit a fraction above the close. Adjusted stops are entered as replacements. Partials due at 2R are limit orders at the 2R price. Time-stop exits are market-on-open.

Managing the temptation to do more

The nightly check is where most swing traders drift into intraday habits, because the market is closed and it feels safe to look around. Three rules hold the line:

1. No scans on weeknights. If a new idea appears, write the ticker on the weekend list and close the chart. It will still be there on Saturday, and if it has already moved, it was not the right entry anyway.
2. No regime re-evaluation. The regime was labelled on the weekend using a complete weekly bar. A bad Tuesday does not relabel it. If the index breaks something obvious, the only mid-week response is to stop taking new entries until the weekend, which is what the weekly budget already enforces.
3. No news. Read the earnings date and the event calendar, not the commentary. Whether the number was "good" is not your job; whether the stock held its level at the close is.

Key idea: The nightly check confirms triggers at the close, updates stops, prepares tomorrow's orders and journals one line each. It never scans, never relabels the regime and never reads the news.

The heat sheet in practice

Updating the heat sheet nightly is the most tedious step and the one that most often reveals a problem. A trail that tightened frees room; a new entry uses it. When the sheet shows heat within 1% of the limit, tomorrow's entries are restricted to whatever fits. When it shows a correlated group over cap because two positions moved into the same theme (a stock and its sector's rotation, say), one of them is reduced at the open.

For markets that do not close

Crypto and forex have no 4 pm close. Pick a fixed daily close for your chart (00:00 UTC is the common choice for crypto; 5 pm New York for forex) and run the check after it. The discipline is identical: the "day" is whatever bar you have chosen, and you act on its close, not on the wick in between.

Skipping a night

Miss one night and the resting stops protect the book; miss two and a trail may have gone unraised or a time stop unexecuted. If you know a night will be missed, tighten every trail to the 10 EMA the night before and leave partial limit orders resting at 2R. The book runs on autopilot for a day at a slightly tighter setting.

Try it: Run the check tonight with a timer. Note which step took longest. If it was the fired-alerts step, your watchlist may be too long; if it was the journal, you are writing too much (one line is the target); if it was anything involving a chart you had not planned to look at, that is the leak.

Recap

• Fifteen minutes after the close: positions, stops, fired alerts, orders, events, journal.
• Triggers are confirmed at the close with the volume and higher-high conditions, never on the intraday alert.
• Tomorrow's orders are written tonight and only typed in the morning.
• No scans, no regime changes, no news on weeknights.
• For 24-hour markets, choose a fixed daily close and treat it as the bar.