Checking the plan again at the halfway point of the session

[Fairman]

Checking the plan again at the halfway point of the session

Most traders write a plan before the session and never look at it again until the end of the day. That's fine when the plan holds. It's less helpful when the market has done something the plan didn't consider.

A short check at the halfway point of your trading window can catch that. For London that might be around 10:00 London time. For a New York session trader it might be the start of lunch.

What I'd ask at that point, in a few lines:

Is the bias still the same as it was this morning? If you planned for longs above a level and price has spent the last hour below it, that bias needs updating, not defending.

Have the key levels changed? A level that was hit and cleanly broken isn't a level any more. A new high or low made in the session might be more important now than anything you marked before the open.

What's still on the calendar? Sometimes the most important release of the day is in the second half of your window, and the morning was just positioning.

How many trades and how much risk have you used? If you've already taken most of your allowed trades, the second half should probably be a lot pickier.

The check doesn't need to produce a new plan. Often the answer is that nothing has changed. But it puts a deliberate stop in the session where you look at the bigger picture again instead of reacting candle by candle.

[Fairman]

Writing the check down rather than doing it in your head makes a big difference. Two or three lines in the same document as the morning plan. Later, when you review the week, you can see how often the midday check changed your view and whether the changes were sensible. A plan that never gets updated on any day probably isn't being looked at honestly. A plan that gets rewritten every single morning at the midpoint is probably too vague to be useful, so the record tells you something about how good the original plans were. It also gives you something to compare against the end of day review.

[Fairman]

Timing the check around price rather than the clock is an option some people prefer. For example, doing it after the first time the session's opening range breaks, or after a key level is touched. The advantage is that it happens when something has actually changed. The downside is that on a slow day it might never trigger, and slow days are often exactly when a trader starts to drift into forcing setups. A fixed time check has the benefit of happening every session, whatever the market does. A combination works for some people: a fixed time check, plus an extra one if something big happens before that time.

[Fairman]

The same pause works as a physical check. Have you been sitting for two hours straight? Is your attention still sharp? A lot of bad trades in the second half of a session come from fatigue rather than a bad read of the market. Standing up for a few minutes, getting some water and then looking at the charts again with fresh eyes is a small step, but it often makes the second half look different from how it looked when you were tired and staring at the same five minute chart. The physical check also covers screens and setup. A frozen chart, a disconnected feed or a platform that needs restarting is easier to notice when you deliberately stop for a moment rather than staring at the same chart tick by tick.

[Fairman]

On a prop account the midpoint check is a good place to look at the rule numbers too. Where is the daily loss limit relative to your current equity, how close are you to any consistency threshold, are there any restricted news times still ahead today. These numbers move as the session goes on, and the risk of breaking a rule usually rises when you stop checking them. Building them into the same short routine keeps them in front of you without having to stare at the dashboard constantly. The firm's dashboard and the platform equity can differ by a little, so check the one the firm uses for the rule.

[FXS London Scalper]

A halfway check at 10:00 London fits the session well. By then the first move is usually done and you can see whether the day matches the plan. One extra question for the check: has the spread or volatility changed from what the plan assumed? If the morning was much quieter than expected, targets based on normal conditions may be too ambitious for the rest of the session. Lowering targets or stopping early can be the right answer, and it is better decided at 10:00 than at 11:30 after two scratched trades.