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Twenty Questions to Ask Before Every Trade

A short list of questions can catch mistakes that analysis alone misses. Use these as an extended checklist, especially for important trades.

Market context:

1. What is the higher-timeframe bias?
2. Where is price in the range: premium or discount?
3. What liquidity has been taken, and what remains?
4. Is there upcoming news that could disrupt this?
5. Is this a liquid session?

Setup quality:

6. What exactly is my trigger?
7. Is the zone fresh and meaningful?
8. Did a structure shift confirm the move?
9. Is there displacement behind it?
10. Does the reward-to-risk meet my minimum?

Risk:

11. Where is my stop, and why there?
12. What is my risk percentage?
13. Have I calculated the lot size correctly?
14. Does this overlap with other open trades?
15. Is my daily limit still intact?

Mindset:

16. Am I calm and focused?
17. Am I trying to recover a loss or prove something?
18. Would I take this trade if I'd just won three in a row? Lost three?

Exit:

19. What's my target, and what invalidates the idea?
20. What will I do if price hits my stop?

Not every question needs a long answer. If you cannot answer one, pause.

Some traders choose five or six of these as their main checklist and keep the full list for review.

Better questions lead to better trades.

I don't actually go through all twenty for every trade. I picked the six that catch my most common mistakes and those are on a sticky note. The full list is for bigger trades or when something feels off. To choose your six, look at your last month of losing trades and note which question would have stopped each one. For me it was mostly news timing, trading against the higher timeframe, and entering before the candle closed. Your list will be different. Review it every couple of months, because once a mistake stops showing up in the journal, that question can come off the note and something else can take its place.

Fairman wrote: 4. Is there upcoming news that could disrupt this?

I'd make this one more specific, because "is there news" is easy to answer yes to every day and then ignore. Three sub-questions work better: what is the next high-impact release for either currency in the pair, how many minutes away is it, and will my target realistically be hit before then? If the answer to the last one is no, the trade becomes a bet on the release whether I intended that or not.

It also links to question 13. Holding a full-size position into CPI with a stop that assumes normal spreads is a different trade from the one drawn on the chart, even if the lot size calculation was correct.

For the first couple of weeks I'd answer them in writing. After that they become automatic and you'll run through the important ones in your head in a few seconds. A shortened version of five key questions is useful after that: what's the higher timeframe bias, is there news in the next hour, where is the stop and why, what's the size for my risk, and am I calm or chasing something. Write those five on a card next to the screen. Go back to the full list for any trade that feels unusual or when you notice your results slipping.