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The Pre-Weekend Risk Checklist

Friday afternoon can feel relaxed, but it's one of the riskiest times to be careless. Liquidity thins, reversals appear, and weekend risk looms. A short checklist helps you finish the week safely.

Run this checklist about an hour before your chosen weekend cutoff.

1. List open positions. Do you know exactly what's open?

2. Check each stop and target. Are they in place at the broker?

3. Decide hold or close. For each trade, does your plan allow holding over the weekend? If not, close it.

4. Check news. Are there weekend events, such as elections or announcements, that could cause a gap?

5. Reduce size if holding. Consider closing part of the position.

6. Confirm margin level. Make sure there's a comfortable buffer.

7. Review the week's journal entries. Complete any missing screenshots and notes.

8. Update your dashboard. Record the weekly numbers.

9. Set your plan for next week. Mark key levels and write your bias.

10. Close the platform. Give yourself a real break.

Optional: write down one lesson from the week and one goal for the next.

This routine protects you from gap risk and also creates a clear boundary between trading and rest.

Finish each week deliberately. It keeps small problems from following you into Monday.

Small addition from experience: check the calendar for Monday too, not just Friday. If there's something big early Monday in Asia, holding over the weekend carries more gap risk than usual. That one caught me out once.

One more item I'd add to the checklist: double-check that you don't have forgotten pending orders anywhere. Orders that sit over the weekend can get triggered by a Sunday gap at a terrible price. A buy limit sitting 30 pips below the Friday close can fill at the open if the market gaps down, and you start the week with a trade you didn't plan to hold and a worse price than intended. I scroll the trade tab and the orders list on every account before closing the platform on Friday. If an order is still valid for Monday, I note it down and re-enter it after the London open.