Pre-session routine

It is 09:00 ET (21:00 ICT, winter; 20:00 ICT in US summer time). The cash session opens in thirty minutes. One trader opens the charts cold and plans to “see what happens”. Another spends twenty minutes on the same fixed routine she runs every day and then, for the next three hours, mostly copies decisions she has already written down. By 12:00 ET the first trader has taken seven trades, most of them unplanned; the second has taken two, both from her cards. This lesson is about building the second trader’s routine for yourself, and about being honest regarding what it can and cannot do.

Key term

A pre-session routine (quy trình trước phiên) is a fixed, written sequence of checks and decisions you finish before the open, in the same order every day Definition. Its output is a short sheet plus two or three if-then cards (kịch bản nếu-thì): “IF this happens at this price, THEN I do this; INVALID if that happens.” The content of the sheet is taught in M4.08. This lesson is about the routine around it: order, timing, the self-check and the habit. The particular steps and limits below are our house choices, not measured facts House rule.

How it works

The order: same steps, every day

Write each step, in this order, finished by about 09:20 ET (21:20 ICT winter, 20:20 summer):

1. Desk check. Data feed connected, the right contract month on the chart (the roll catches people every quarter), your execution platform logged in with its bracket template loaded. If the desk is broken you find out now, not with a position on.
2. The sheet. The five lines from M4.08: the day’s ruler and width, where price sits against prior value and the overnight range, the open read, a working hypothesis, the scenarios. Written, not thought.
3. Areas, not predictions. Transfer at most a few areas per side from your level map and write why each is there. They are places to watch order flow, not prices where the market turns: in our lab’s test of pre-market level families, levels were respected no more often than random prices at the same distance Measured: no edgeNasdaq index. Many traders also tag levels as “fresh” or “already tested”; whether that changes anything on NQ is not yet measured, so log it if you use it and score it later (M7.03).
4. News times. Times only, no opinions: when the release hits (M8.01), and whether your plan says to be flat around it.
5. Self-check. Sleep, stress, distraction, yesterday’s result: one score from 1 to 5, written down.
6. If-then cards. Two or three cards, each with a trigger, an entry, an invalidation and a target, plus one card that says when you do nothing.

The order matters because each step feeds the next: the desk check can cancel the day, the sheet decides which areas matter, the news times and the self-check set the size, and the cards come last because they need all of it.

Why decide before the open

Before the open you have no position, no P&L on screen and no clock pressure. During the session you have all three. The routine moves as many decisions as possible into the calm part of the day, so that in the session you mostly recognise a written trigger and copy a written response. That is a house design choice with a reasonable mechanism behind it, and one piece of it has outside evidence: people who write plans in if-then form follow them more often than people who only set a goal PlausibleOther market (the numbers are below).

Myth / hypothesis: “Willpower is a tank that runs dry, so every decision you make early saves fuel for later.” The popular “ego depletion” or decision-fatigue story did not hold up in a large preregistered replication across 23 labs (Hagger et al. 2016, d = 0.04, 95% CI −0.07 to +0.15) Lore. Our lab has not graded it. You do not need it: the reason to decide early is that the conditions are better before the open, not that you have a fixed budget of decisions.

The self-check sets size

Your expectancy and your stop rules (M6.08, M6.11) were measured on your normal trading days. A day when you slept four hours or are still angry about yesterday is outside that sample, and nothing tells you how you trade on such days. So the house rule is written in advance and applied without debate House rule:

• 4–5: normal size.
• 3: normal size, but only trades that match a card.
• 2: half size, cards only, one trade then review.
• 1: no trading today; do the routine anyway and score the sheet at the close.

The thresholds are ours. Use them as a starting point and adjust them from your own journal (M7.03), not from how the morning feels.

If-then cards

Each card has four parts: “IF <trigger at a price, by a rule written in advance> THEN <entry, stop, target> · INVALID ”. For example: “IF price probes below 18,040 and a 5-minute bar closes back above it, THEN buy the next bar, stop below the probe low, target the overnight high; INVALID two 5-minute closes below 18,040.” The last card is always a do-nothing card: “IF price chops inside the overnight range after 10:30 ET, THEN stand down.” A card does not make a trade more likely to win. It decides, while you are calm, what you do if the trigger appears.

What the data says

So the honest claim is narrow: a written routine helps you do what you planned. Whether what you planned has an edge is a separate question, answered by scoring the sheet against a placebo (M7.03) and by the evidence for each setup, not by the routine.

Worked example: one synthetic morning

A synthetic winter day, NQ, no real date.

09:00 ET (21:00 ICT). Desk check: feed live, front-month contract, bracket template loaded. Sheet: prior value area 18,040 to 18,095, overnight range 18,032 to 18,074, NQ indicated at 18,060, inside prior value. No scheduled US release before 10:00 ET. Areas: prior value area low 18,040 and the overnight low 18,032 below; overnight high 18,074 above. Self-check: six hours’ sleep, calm, flat yesterday: 4/5, normal size.

09:05 ET. Three cards:

• A: IF price probes below 18,040 and a 5-minute bar closes back above it, THEN buy the next bar, stop 0.25 below the overnight low (18,031.75), target 18,061.75; INVALID two 5-minute closes below 18,040.
• B: IF two 5-minute closes below 18,040, THEN no long; the overnight low is the next area to watch, and I need a new card before trading.
• C: IF price chops between 18,040 and 18,074 after 10:30 ET, THEN stand down for the morning.

09:35–09:40 ET. Price probes to 18,034.25, then the 09:40 bar closes at 18,042.50. Card A’s trigger has fired. At 09:45 you buy 18,043.00: risk 11.25 points (45 ticks), target 18,061.75 for 18.75 points, about 1.67R. On this path the target trades at 10:00. The decision was made at 09:05; 09:40 only executed it.

The point is not that the trade won. On another path the 09:40 bar closes at 18,038 and card B applies: no long, no argument with yourself, and the routine still did its job.

When the routine fails

Three ways the routine goes wrong. First, the routine runs but nothing on the sheet is binding, so you trade a breakout that matches no card “because it looked strong”. Second, the cards are written so loosely (“buy weakness near support”) that any price action fits them. Third, the routine becomes a forecast: you mark six areas, the market bounces at one, and you remember the hit and forget the five misses. The fix for all three is the same: score every card and every area at the close, including the ones that never triggered (M7.03).

If you trade an evaluation or funded account, the firm’s daily loss limit and any news restrictions go on the sheet as fixed lines, copied from the firm’s help center with the date you read it; the PROP course covers those rules.

Common mistake: Treating prep as “looking at charts for a while”. Scrolling charts produces familiarity, not decisions. If nothing is written, nothing was decided, and the session decides for you.

Common mistake: Reading a winning morning as proof the routine “works”. One good day is one path. The routine’s measured benefit is on plan-following; whether your plan has an edge needs dozens of scored sessions against a placebo.

Common mistake: Skipping the self-check on the days you most need it, or overriding a 2/5 because the setup “looks perfect”. The score only protects you if the size rule was written before you saw the chart.

Drill: ten mornings, timed and scored

Run your routine before ten sessions (live, sim or replay) and log it like data.

1. Write the start and end time of the routine, and the self-check score.
2. Write two or three cards plus a do-nothing card, with prices.
3. During the session, log every trade and the card it came from, or “no card”.
4. At the close, mark each card: triggered or not, followed or not.

What we don’t know yet

• Whether traders who run a written routine earn more than those who do not is not yet measured; the if-then evidence is about following plans, not returns.
• Whether “fresh” levels behave differently from levels already tested on NQ is not yet measured.
• The self-check thresholds and the order of steps have not been compared with alternatives.

Recap

• Run the same written routine every day, finished before 09:30 ET: desk check, sheet, areas, news times, self-check, if-then cards.
• Deciding before the open moves decisions to a time with no position and no clock pressure; written if-then plans are followed more often (plausible for trading, measured in other domains).
• Areas are where you watch flow, not forecasts: pre-market levels measured no better than random prices.
• The self-check sets size by a rule written in advance; the do-nothing card is part of the plan.

Further reading

• Gollwitzer, P. M. and Sheeran, P. (2006), “Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes”, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38: the main evidence for writing plans in if-then form.
• Hagger, M. S. et al. (2016), “A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect”, Perspectives on Psychological Science 11(4): why “decision fatigue” is not a good reason for a routine.
• Our lab: pre-market level families were touched and respected at the same rate as random prices at the same distance (721 sessions, Nasdaq-index proxy); the routine itself has not been tested against alternatives.

Connects to: M6.11 (the trade-management rules the cards encode) → M7.02, the in-session half of the routine. Later, the DESK course turns this routine into a daily note and a full pre-market plan.

Educational content only — not financial advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss.