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The Sunday Preparation, Setting Up Your Week

A good week often begins on Sunday. Spending an hour on preparation reduces stress and improves your decisions, because you've already done the heavy thinking.

A step-by-step Sunday routine:

1. Review last week's journal. Note results, lessons, and rule violations.

2. Update your weekly dashboard. Record the key numbers.

3. Mark higher-timeframe levels. Weekly and daily highs and lows, key zones, and unfilled imbalances.

4. Determine weekly bias. Based on weekly and daily structure, write one sentence for each pair you trade.

5. Check the economic calendar. Note high-impact events for the week and mark them on your chart or in a notes document.

6. Identify the draw on liquidity. Which levels are likely targets?

7. Choose your focus pairs. One or two for the week.

8. Set your weekly goals. Process goals, such as "journal every trade" and "no trades after the daily limit."

9. Plan your schedule. Which days and sessions will you trade? Which will you rest?

10. Set alerts. Place them at key levels.

Keep the markets closed until your preparation is done. Many weekend charts have gaps or thin data, so avoid forming strong opinions from partial information.

Finish with a short breath practice, and then go enjoy your evening.

A prepared trader reacts less and decides more.

For step 5, I'd go one level further than marking high-impact events. Write down the expected number and the previous reading for each one, and what outcome would actually change your bias. "US CPI on Wednesday" is a note. "US CPI Wednesday 13:30, consensus 0.3, a 0.5 would likely push the dollar higher and break my EURUSD long idea" is a plan.

It also helps to note which events land at awkward times. Central bank decisions in the evening for European traders, Australian and New Zealand data overnight, and anything during the clock change weeks when the usual times shift by an hour.

I agree on keeping the charts closed until the prep is done. Sunday afternoon is the worst time to form an opinion from a weekly chart that hasn't seen a single tick since Friday.

Something I do on Sundays that I left out: I mark the previous week's high and low and the weekly open on my main pairs before anything else. Those levels shape a lot of the week's action, and having them on the chart before Monday stops me reacting to every Asian wiggle. A pattern worth watching is how price behaves the first time it reaches one of them. A sweep of last week's low that closes back above it on the four hour chart often tells you more about the week's direction than any indicator. If it breaks and holds below instead, that's useful too. Either way, you're reading the reaction at a level you planned for, not guessing.

Don't overdo the planning, though. If you mark twenty levels and five possible scenarios per pair, you'll freeze on Monday. A few key levels and one main idea per pair is enough to start the week. My limit is three levels per pair, usually last week's high and low and one major daily zone, plus a one line bias like looking for buys above 1.0800, otherwise stand aside. I also note the two or three events that matter, like a central bank decision on Thursday. If the plan takes more than an hour, I'm probably adding detail that won't be used.