For Business

Trading Psychology

How to Build a Trading Routine

A trading routine is a fixed sequence of steps at fixed times, and it runs the same on a day with trades and a day without. This paper shows you one example day as a timetable, prepare at half past eight, watch until one, review at five; the idea as the sun's arc, which gives the day a shape before the market gives it a mood; the routine from outside, as a sign on a shop door; why it works, as thirty scattered decisions against five in a row; and the saved profiles on your platform that open the morning screen and the review screen in one click each.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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The routine as a timetable

A trading routine is a fixed sequence of steps at fixed times, with these as example times on a London morning. At 08:30, twenty minutes of preparation: the calendar read, the levels drawn, the plan written. At 09:00 the watch, four hours with alerts set at the levels and one trade at most. At 13:00 the screen is shut and stays shut. At 17:00 fifteen minutes of review, one journal line per trade, the day graded. At 17:15 it is done, and it is the same tomorrow whatever today did. The routine is not the trades. It is the frame the trades happen inside, and it runs the same on a day with none, which is the day it matters most.

The sun's arc

Picture the sun's arc across a day. The arc is the same every day: the sun is at the same place at the same hour, and it does not rise later because yesterday was cloudy. What changes is the weather under it. A routine is the arc. It gives the day a shape before the market gives it a mood, and the three suns on it are the three fixed things: preparation in the morning, the watch through the middle, the review at the end. A day with a routine has somewhere to be at every hour. A day without one is weather all the way through, and the trader is out in it.

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