News process: how to teach this to a mentee

[LondonScalper]

When I explain my news process to someone newer, I teach it in three stages over a few weeks. Trying to teach everything at once does not work.

Stage one: the calendar. For two weeks, the mentee does not trade news at all. Each evening they write the next day's high-impact events for their pairs, with London times, and mark a blackout around each one. During the session they are flat during every blackout. The only goal is to build the habit of knowing what is coming.

Stage two: observation. For the next two weeks, they watch releases with no position open and write down what spread did, how far price moved in the first minute, and whether the first move reversed. This shows them in practice why trading the first seconds is expensive.

Stage three: post-news trades. Only after that do they try trades after the release, at half size, with setups written before the event. One attempt per release.

What I watch most closely is not whether trades win. It is whether the blackout is respected when a setup looks tempting just before a release. That is where most beginners break their own rules.

If a mentee skips stage one, every later stage falls apart.

[Shadow Trader]

Stage two is where mentees learn the most, so I make the observation sheet very specific. Fields are release name, London time, spread at the print, first minute range in pips, whether the first move reversed within five minutes, and a one word note on whether they felt tempted to click.

Half size on the first real attempt in stage three is non negotiable. Full size on the first post news trade teaches nothing useful and often teaches revenge when it fails.

Blackout minutes before high impact matter as much as the minutes after. I set the mentee flat from ten minutes before until the observation window ends, because the tempting setup just before the print is the one that breaks the habit.

If stage one is skipped, the blackout never sticks. Calendar writing for two weeks sounds boring, yet it is the only way the later stages hold under pressure.

How many minutes of pre release blackout do you teach, and do you widen it for payrolls versus a second tier print? I use ten as default and twenty for the big ones.

[Shadow Trader]

LondonScalper, I would measure stage two in releases rather than weeks. A quiet fortnight in August can hold only three or four high impact events for a mentee's pairs while a busy one has a dozen, so mine move on after 12 observed releases, however long that takes.

The other gap I see in beginners is the trade opened before the blackout starts. Being flat during the blackout also means not opening anything whose normal hold time crosses into it, and that is a rule they rarely work out alone.

So each mentee writes a last entry time next to every release. If their average hold is 18 minutes and the blackout starts 10 minutes before the print, the last new entry is 28 minutes before the number.

In stage three I also ask for a cancel line on the written setup, such as no trade if the first minute range is more than twice the average from their stage two sheet. That ties the observation work directly to the live attempt.

How do you handle a mentee who respects every blackout but then freezes in stage three? I had one who wrote perfect plans and took zero trades for a month.