The pre-trade checklist
Apply a ten-item pre-trade checklist before clicking the buy or sell button.
Lesson path
Market Foundations + Forex Mechanics
First Live Trade
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Apply a ten-item pre-trade checklist before clicking the buy or sell button.
Ten boxes to tick before you click
Welcome to your first live trade chapter. You've finished demo. The chart looks the same. The buttons look the same. Your nervous system, however, has noticed that real money is on the line, and it is about to behave very differently. The pre-trade checklist is the tool that keeps you from acting on that nervous system instead of your plan.
Here are the ten items. One: the higher-timeframe bias is clear and the trade aligns with it. Two: the setup matches the one on your written plan, not a relative of it. Three: reward-to-risk is at least 2R. Four: risk is no more than 1 percent of the $500 account, so $5 or less. Five: the stop sits beyond a real structural level, not a round number you picked because it felt right. Six: no high-impact news is scheduled in the next 30 minutes. Seven: the session for this pair is actually active. Eight: the broker shows the account balance you expect. Nine: you feel calm, not chasing, not bored, not rushing. Ten: your journal is open and the entry row is primed.
The checklist works because trading is mostly about what you don't do. The market is generous with bad setups. It serves them with the same chart, the same candles, the same green and red. The checklist is a slow, boring sieve that separates plan trades from impulse trades. Boring is the point. Boring is what makes the math work over hundreds of entries.
Print the checklist. Tape it to the monitor. Read it out loud before every entry for the first 50 live trades. After 50 it will be internalized, and you can switch to a quick mental scan. Until then, treat the printed page as a co-pilot who has saved more accounts than you ever will.
Recap: ten items, no skips. Context, execution, operator readiness. One no and you walk away from the trade.
Knowledge check
Answer before moving on.
1. You spot a setup that matches your plan. Reward-to-risk is 1.5R. Everything else on the checklist passes. What do you do?
2. Which checklist item is about the operator, not the chart?
3. On a $500 account, what's the maximum dollar risk allowed by the checklist?
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Use the knowledge check first. After you pass it, this card turns into the save-and-continue handoff.