Do not move the stop wider
Tighter is fine. Wider is the rule break that most often turns a -1R into a -2.5R.
Discretion on the chart, a checklist for everything else. The boxes you tick before, during and after a trade are the difference between a process you can defend and a story you tell yourself afterwards.
Any one no kills the trade.
A trading checklist is a short, written list of conditions that must be true before you click buy or sell. Pilots use them. Surgeons use them. Day traders should too. The whole point is to remove the in-the-moment decisions that fatigue, emotion or boredom would otherwise make for you.
The list is split into three: pre-trade (the trade is valid, sized correctly, and within the plan), during the trade (mostly a list of things you do not do), and post-trade (record what happened so the next trade gets better). Each section should be small enough to actually tick off.
A checklist makes risk management repeatable, anchors the trading plan in a daily ritual, and turns the journal into a useful feedback loop because every trade gets recorded the same way.
If any of these is no, do not place the trade. Move on.
| 1. Setup match | The trade fits one of the playbooks in your written plan. |
| 2. Risk calculated | Dollar risk equals your fixed-percent risk per trade. |
| 3. Stop placed | A hard stop is on the broker, not just in your head. |
| 4. Target defined | Take-profit or trail rule is clear before the entry. |
| 5. Size correct | Lot size matches the stop distance and risk amount. |
| 6. No news landmines | No high-impact release within the next hour. |
| 7. Daily loss OK | The day's loss is well below the daily cap. |
| 8. Open risk OK | Adding this trade keeps total open risk inside its limit. |
Shorter, but they catch the mistakes a pre-trade checklist cannot.
Tighter is fine. Wider is the rule break that most often turns a -1R into a -2.5R.
Adding to a winner can have rules. Adding to a loser is the path to -3R trades.
If your plan allows partials, the level is pre-defined. If not, do not.
Tag the trade by playbook so per-setup stats stay honest. Untagged trades drag the average.
Two charts on the trade record. Six months later it is the only review material that still tells the truth.
Did the trades match the plan? Where did the checklist fail? The honest answer is what improves next week.
The plan, the calculators, the journal - the rest of the loop the checklist sits inside.
Where the playbooks the checklist verifies are written down.
Read →The four numbers the pre-trade checklist defends.
Read →Turn a stop distance and a fixed dollar risk into the exact lot size.
Open →Score every idea against a clean 1:R target before you take it.
Open →What the checklist is ultimately defending: a real, measurable edge.
Read →Where every checked-or-skipped trade lives, with tags and screenshots.
Read →What traders ask once they realise a checklist is not optional.
A trading checklist is a short list of conditions that must be true before you take a trade, and a short list of confirmations during and after the trade. It removes the in-the-moment decisions that emotion would otherwise make.
Setup criteria match, risk per trade calculated, stop and target placed, no high-impact news within the next hour, account not in daily loss limit, position size correct for the stop distance, and the trade is part of the written plan.
Yes, but briefly. The point is to hold the stop and target as set, only adjusting under pre-defined rules. The during-trade checklist is mostly a list of things you do not do.
Record the trade with notes and a tag, mark whether it matched the setup criteria, screenshot the entry and exit, and review at end of day. The post-trade items are where the next trade gets better.
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Connect cTrader, MetaTrader, OANDA or Bybit and Tracker Fx records every trade so you can see, weeks later, which checklist items were skipped on the trades that hurt.
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