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Most of my calendar work happens on Sunday, but PMI days get an extra ten minutes the night before, because the flash PMIs land right in the middle of my London session and I've been caught by them more than I'd like to admit.

The routine, roughly as I do it at about 21:00 London the night before:

I open the calendar and filter to the flash releases for France, Germany, the eurozone and the UK, then note the exact times in my notebook in London time. In winter and summer those times shift relative to me if the clocks have changed in one place but not another, so I don't trust memory.

I mark which of my usual setups are likely to be live at those times. If the London open range breaks at 08:10 and the French flash is at 08:15, I either take the trade at half size or leave it.

I decide the night before, not in the moment. Is tomorrow a "trade through it" day or a "flat from 08:10 to 08:35" day? It goes in the notebook in capitals.

Then I close the laptop. The point of doing it the night before is that I'm calm and not looking at a live chart when I make the decision.

Doing it the night before is the part that matters. At 21:00 with no live chart, half size or flat looks obvious. At 08:12 with a breakout running, it never does.

Worth knowing for anyone newer: the flash PMIs come in order, France at 08:15, Germany at 08:30, the eurozone at 09:00 and the UK at 09:30, all London time. The French print is often the bigger surprise for EURUSD, because the German number gets most of the attention.

A strong French print sometimes gets fully reversed by Germany fifteen minutes later. So if I take the 08:10 break at half size, I take profit before 08:28 rather than holding into the German release.

Writing it in capitals is a nice touch, I do something similar on a sticky note. Do you treat the UK PMI the same way for cable, or is 09:30 outside your main session?

LondonScalper, the night before decision still stands, but I started treating France and Germany as one block rather than two separate prints. Half size into 08:15 is fine only if I am flat by 08:28, otherwise I leave both alone.

The clock shift week is where my notebook used to lie to me. When the UK has changed and the eurozone has not, or the other way round, the London times I wrote in ink are wrong by an hour for one of the four releases.

So the sticky note now has two columns for that week only: my wall clock and the release clock. It looks pedantic until the morning a German print arrives while I am still watching an 08:10 break that should already be closed.

I also stop writing TRADE THROUGH unless the forecast consensus is tight and I have no open London range position at all. On wide consensus days the default is flat from 08:10 to 08:35, no debate.

Do you ever reverse a Sunday capital letter decision when the Asian range is already huge? I tried that once and it was just a way to talk myself back into size.