Trading Checklist: A Pre-Market Routine and a Pre-Trade Check

What should be on a trading checklist?

Two lists, used at two different moments. The pre-market checklist runs once, before your session, and prepares both the market picture and you. The pre-trade checklist runs before every entry and takes about ten seconds.

Many checklists stop at the market half. The mental half is shorter, but it is the half that has to hold when the first trade loses. The checklist is the daily tool; the rules it checks belong in your plan, and these trading discipline rules are a place to start.

What is the 15-minute pre-market checklist?

Run it at the same time every trading day, after you are properly awake and before your platform takes your attention. Part 1 prepares the market picture; part 2 prepares you.

Part 1: the market (about 10 minutes)

1. Check the economic calendar. In the US, major Bureau of Labor Statistics releases, such as the jobs report and CPI, are scheduled at 8:30 a.m. ET (BLS (opens in a new tab)), an hour before the stock market's 9:30 a.m. open. Write down the time of anything scheduled inside your session.
2. Mark your levels. The levels your setups depend on, such as the prior day's high, low and close, and the overnight range.
3. Name today's setups. Write which setups you will take today, and which conditions would make you skip them.

Part 2: you (about 5 minutes)

4. Rate your state. Sleep, stress outside trading and mood, each from 1 to 10. Sleep is on the list for a reason: in a lab study of 29 adults, one night without sleep shifted choices in a gambling task from defending against losses toward chasing gains (Venkatraman et al., 2011 (opens in a new tab)). That was a full night of lost sleep and a lab task, but a bad night is still information about today.
5. Write your limits. Your daily loss limit and the most trades you will take. If you have not chosen the number yet, see how to set a daily loss limit.
6. Choose one if-then rule. Pick the moment you are most likely to slip today and decide your response now, for example: "If I take a losing trade, then I step away for 10 minutes." The guide to the if-then rule explains why this format works, and where its evidence stops.
7. Breathe for two minutes. Slow breathing, at fewer than 10 breaths a minute, has been linked to calmer physiology in small studies, though methods varied too much to pool them (Zaccaro et al., 2018 (opens in a new tab)). It may help you feel calmer; it will not fix a bad plan. The breathing reset has a timer.

What goes on a pre-trade checklist?

Three questions, answered honestly before every order. Any "no" means no trade.

1. Is this setup written in my plan? If you cannot name it, it is not in the plan. This one question filters out many chased entries; the guide to avoid FOMO entries goes further.
2. Where am I wrong, and does that loss fit inside today's limit? If you cannot say where the trade is invalid, you are guessing. If the loss at that point would break your daily limit, the trade does not fit today.
3. Am I calm, or am I trying to make back the last trade? If the honest answer is "make it back", read what to do after a losing trade before you enter.

The third question exists because emotion and results travel together. In a study of 80 day traders over five weeks, those with more intense emotional reactions to gains and losses performed worse (Lo, Repin & Steenbarger, 2005). The study shows a correlation, not a cause, but it is a good reason to ask.

How do I rate my readiness before the first trade?

A readiness rating is a quick score of your state before the first order. It is not a medical or validated test. Its value comes from asking the same questions every day, so that after a few weeks you can compare your morning scores with the days you broke rules.

A paper version needs one line: three ratings from 1 to 10 (sleep, stress outside trading, mood) and two yes-or-no checks (limits written, if-then rule chosen). Decide your thresholds in advance, for example "sleep below 5 or stress above 7 means a shorter session". The numbers are yours; no study has set them for traders.

TradeMind: Trading Psychology, the iPhone trading psychology app (App Store ID 6761249038) by Nikolaos Aristotelis Adamidis, scores this as the TradeMind Trader Readiness score, from 0 to 100. Your own checklist is worth up to 30 of those points: the share of items you tick, times 30, rounded down. Tick 4 of 5 items and you get 24.

The total stays between 0 and 100, is capped at 60 on a day without a pledge and at 50 on any day you log "I tilted". It is a self-reflection measure: the weights are design choices, not research findings.

What if I am not ready to trade today?

Decide this on a calm day, not at 9:25. Write the options into your plan, so a poor state check leads to a choice you already made.

Sitting out is a real option, not a failure. If you want a reduced-risk rule for these days, set its number in your plan, never in the moment. If you trade a funded account, the prop firm challenge routine adds the firm's limits to this check.

What does a pre-market routine look like by the clock?

Here is one example for the US stock session. The times are only an example; the point is to fix them, so the routine happens at the same time every day.

What time do day traders wake up?

It varies, and there is no right answer. What matters is the gap between waking and your first decision. Count back from your session: US stocks open at 9:30 a.m. ET, which is early afternoon in London, while futures, forex and crypto traders choose their own session start. If you trade straight out of bed, the state check is the first step to go.

Is there a printable trading checklist?

Yes. Copy the block below into a note or Notion, or print this page. It is free and needs no sign-up.

PRE-MARKET CHECKLIST (about 15 minutes)

The market
[ ] Scheduled releases today, with times: ______________
[ ] Levels my setups depend on: _______________________
[ ] Setups I will take: ____________  Skip if: ________

Me
[ ] Sleep __/10   Stress outside trading __/10   Mood __/10
[ ] Daily loss limit: $____ or ____R
[ ] Max trades today: ____
[ ] If ________________, then I ________________.
[ ] 2 minutes of slow breathing

PRE-TRADE CHECK (before every entry)
1. Is this setup written in my plan?
2. Where am I wrong, and does that loss fit today's limit?
3. Am I calm, or trying to make back the last trade?
Any "no" = no trade.

How does TradeMind run this checklist?

TradeMind covers part 2 of the routine and keeps it on the NYSE clock. It does not check the market for you, and it has no broker connection, so it cannot see whether a trade passed your pre-trade check.

• Daily Checklist. A card on Home where you add your own items and tick them off. The share you tick becomes up to 30 readiness points.
• The TradeMind Daily Pledge. Steps 5 and 6: a daily loss limit in dollars or R, your maximum trades (1 to 12, default 3) and one if-then guardrail, sealed with a 1.5-second press and hold. It adds 40 readiness points and lifts the cap of 60. See how the pledge works.
• Pre-Session Focus. Step 7 as a guided reset: Centering (1 minute), Price Action Breath (2 minutes, 4 seconds in and 6 out) and Stoic Visualization (3 minutes), where you picture price moving against you right after entry and see yourself accepting the loss without reacting. Finishing it adds 30 readiness points and 10 Discipline Points once a day.
• Reminders. A pre-market prep reminder at 9:00 ET and, if your pledge is still unsigned, a second one at 9:15 ET. Both are skipped on weekends and NYSE holidays.
• The Confirmation Checklist lesson. Lesson 9 of the Killing FOMO track is about the pre-trade check: its notes ask you to tick off your criteria before every click, and its two prompts are "Did I use a checklist?" and "Was I rushing to enter?"

You can see these screens in the how it works section and the toolkit on the homepage.