Introduction: The Moment Before the Move

There is one key habit that appears to separate consistent high-performance traders from the rest, i.e. they fully prepare before engaging in the “battle of the market”.

Before a position is amended or a new order is placed, professional traders engage in a ritual or daily agenda (as many of you have heard me discuss on webinar sessions). This is a structured, repeatable pre-market process that puts YOU in the best place to maintain consistency with your trading plan in the context of current market conditions. Arguably, this should be part of your overall trading system or trading business plan.

The Daily Market Prep Checklist, which you can download by clicking the button below, has been designed with exactly this in mind, to help traders like you start every trading day fully in tune with both the market environment and your internal trading state.

Whether or not you want to take advantage of the free download, this article aims to not only explain each part of the checklist but also explain what to do and why it could be important in your decision-making process.

Whether an experienced trader or less so, additional tips have been added so you can move towards fine-tuning your edge or looking to move to the next level.

Click Here to Download your Free Checklist

Reading the Market’s Mood

Your first task in your trading day is to understand the current market context.

Looking at what happened overnight that may continue to shape the day ahead is vital, not only simply skimming headlines passively, but to actively engage with the flow of global financial information and current drivers. You are trying to build a picture of not only what has happened but what may happen next.

This helps in assessing the day’s potential market bias, such as whether it is a bullish, bearish, or range-bound environment, there is generally a risk-on or risk-off narrative and what the flow is in and out of the major asset classes. Additionally, of course, an evaluation of volatility may help inform not only general risk but also how you may approach some of the positioning you may consider, e.g. where to place stops and take profits, as well as position sizing.

What matters is that you are asking the right questions to help you form a strategy for the market NOW before you act. It is not about getting things right all the time; this is an unrealistic goal, but surely a considered opinion and approach of where the risks and opportunities may be is far better than going in “blind”.

Pro Tip: Market bias is often seen with a review of major global futures; these are the gauges of sentiment. Their pre-market and movement can add weight to your overall market view.

Intermediate Trader Tip: Observe whether volatility expectations (e.g., VIX or price action on longer timeframes) are aligning with any technical setups you may be seeing.

Risk Framework and Positioning

Before you even open your trading platform, your approach to risk should already be mapped out. How many trades are you willing to have open today, and how much of your account are you prepared to risk per position are ESSENTIAL questions to answer at the start of a trading session.

This step is not about limitation. It’s about removing decision fatigue and emotional interference once the market opens, particularly in the event of rapid and significant market moves across multiple positions at the same time. For example, knowing that you’ll only open a maximum of two trades today forces you to be selective and choose those with the strongest set-ups. In addition, “market-oriented” position sizing is a logical way to manage the emotional difficulties of increased account risk due to challenging markets.

The Economic Calendar Moves Price

Traders often focus on the technical picture seen on a chart and miss the ticking countdown to scheduled economic events that may move prices in seconds. Whether a central bank decision, CPI data, if there is a significant move away from numbers that were expected, the market doesn’t just respond tamely, but may undergo a major recalibration.

Of course, this is not only important in terms of opening new positions but managing the open trades you already have, and you are faced with three choices pre-data release:

1. To ride it out
2. To tighten trail stops/reduce positions
3. Exit positions

Taking a few minutes each morning to scan for high and medium-impact events and making the decision on what action you will take and when will serve you well when attempting to manage risk more effectively in these situations.

Intermediate Trader Tip: Start logging how your watchlist instruments react to specific events over time. Journal your chosen approach versus the alternatives to inform you in the future.

The Key Levels That Matter:

The current price is always interacting with the overall structure of price over time. This reality and a key part of your preparation is about identifying those price points where action is most likely to occur and sentiment changes become apparent. These might be recent highs and lows, clear support or resistance zones and of course, round numbers.

Again being prepared through identifying these, particularly those which are approaching such important key price levels can be difference of you getting in or out of a trade at the optimum time as sentiment changes (or doesn’t change suggesting a trend move may be completed), rather than missing an opportunity to get in at the start of a move (rather than later) or taking profit rather than giving it back to the market.

Pro Tip: Print your charts with levels marked or take a screenshot each morning. Reviewing these in hindsight builds your pattern recognition and potentially assists in the creation of EAs or informing strategy changes.

Beyond the Charts – Knowing Market Drivers

Not every market move is tied to a pre-defined data release. Often, as we have seen many times of late, unscheduled events can be massively impactful on sentiment.  Geopolitical tensions that may escalate, trade talks that may influence industries in the back of a “truth social” post, or policy meetings that may produce outcomes that could shift sentiment, e.g. new policy bills, OPEC meetings.

If you can identify two to four potential market drivers beyond the usual data points this may be good information to have when creating your market “picture”, and although you may not have to act on these immediately, knowing that they exist puts you in a better position to respond appropriately rather than react emotionally has got to be a good thing,

Pro Tip: Ask yourself: If this potential story escalates, which instruments are likely to move, and what does that mean to what I am going to do/not do today?

Personal Readiness to trade

This is the most overlooked and underrated part of pre-market preparation. As traders, we often feel that we “have to trade” rather than assessing the risk that we are bringing to the table if we are not in the optimum trading state (again, a topic covered in previous webinars).

Logically, we need to be able to permit ourselves not to trade or to trade less, if we are not in the best place to make decisions at any time or day.

Evaluate where you are at the start of the day with your emotional state, potential out-of-market distractions, and physical wellness. Markets and the potential opportunities that they can give will still be there tomorrow. You must be honest with yourself. If today isn’t the right day, you can reduce size, trade less, or don’t trade at all.

Pro and Intermediate Trader Tip: Track your psychological state in a journal alongside trade results. Patterns will emerge. You’ll start to see which states lead to your best performance — and which sabotage it.

Click Here to Download your Free Checklist

Summary: The Professional Begins Before the Bell

This checklist is not just about technical steps; it’s about creating alignment between you and your interaction with the market. Having considered information that will help form your approach for the day, enables consistency in execution, and this will always be served well by consistency in preparation. Whatever and however you are trading, your process logically should be the same in that you need to do the things not just to prepare to trade but to prepare to perform at the next level you can.

The real work starts before the market opens.

If you have found the article and particularly the download useful, then we would be delighted with any feedback you can give. Please feel free to connect at any time at [email protected] with any thoughts you have about this or other things that may be useful to you on your trading journey.

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