The pre-trade checklist: how to write one you will actually use

Most bad trades are not bad analysis. They are trades taken when the setup was only half there — a level almost reached, a signal almost confirmed — because sitting on your hands felt worse than acting. A checklist lets you make that decision before the moment arrives.

What a checklist is for

A checklist does not find trades for you. It filters the ones you already want to take, so that only those matching your plan get through. Pilots and surgeons use checklists for the same reason: under pressure, people skip steps they know by heart.

Rules you can answer yes or no

Every item should be a question with a clear answer at the moment of entry. "Is the trend up?" is open to interpretation; "Is price above the 200-period moving average on the 4-hour chart?" is not.

• Context: is the higher-timeframe direction the same as my trade?
• Location: is the entry at a level I marked before the session, not one I found after price moved?
• Trigger: has my entry signal actually closed, not just started to form?
• Risk: is the stop where the idea is proven wrong, and is the size within my risk per trade?
• Calendar: is there no high-impact news in the next 30 minutes?

Keep it short

Three to seven items is enough. A list of fifteen gets skimmed and then ignored. If an item never changes a decision, remove it; if the same mistake keeps coming back, turn it into an item.

One list per strategy

If you trade two different setups — a breakout and a pullback, say — they need different conditions. Forcing both into one list leaves half the items irrelevant on every trade, and ticking irrelevant boxes quickly becomes a habit of ticking without reading.

Check whether it works

A checklist is a hypothesis. After 20–30 trades, compare the trades where every item was ticked with the ones you entered anyway. If the fully checked trades do not do better, the items are the wrong ones — change them rather than dropping the idea.

In Simple Trading Journal

You can keep several named checklists, one per strategy, choose which one each journal uses, and tick the items on every trade. Trades that arrive from MetaTrader get the journal's checklist too, so you can fill it in when you add your notes.