Do not trade in the first thirty minutes after you sit down

[Shadow Trader]

When you first open the charts, your brain is still adjusting. You have not absorbed what happened overnight, you may not remember the levels you marked, and you are eager to find something to do. That combination produces rushed entries. I now enforce a thirty minute observation period at the start of each session. During that time, I do not place trades. I review the higher timeframe, update my levels, watch how price is behaving around them, and note anything unusual. If a clean setup forms during that window, I let it go and wait for the next one. At first this felt painful, since I worried about missing moves. After a few weeks, I noticed that my average quality of setups improved and my number of trades fell, with little loss in total profit. The market offers new opportunities all day, but your attention and clarity are limited. Spending the first part of the session building context is like warming up before exercise. It reduces mistakes and lets you act from a plan rather than from impulse.

[FXS HongKong Scalper]

Sitting on your hands for the first half hour works. It also helps to see how the market is behaving before trading. In the Asian session, the first half hour after the Tokyo open often has wider spreads, so waiting is doubly useful.