Building a Pre-Market Alignment Sheet
The alignment sheet fits on one A4 page. Traders who fill it before the session open report fewer impulsive entries — not because the sheet is magic, but because it forces sequential thinking.
Page layout
Divide the page into three horizontal bands:
- Top third: Daily chart sketch or printed screenshot with bias arrow and two key levels marked in green (support) and copper (resistance).
- Middle third: Four-hour chart with the same levels transferred. Circle any level the four-hour respects that the daily ignores.
- Bottom third: One-hour panel left mostly blank until the upper sections agree.
Leave a margin column on the right for timestamps and session notes. Our printed workbooks use a faint grid so your lines stay straight without a ruler.
The five-line header
Before any markup, write five lines at the top:
- Instrument and contract month
- Session you are trading (Asia, London overlap, etc.)
- News or earnings within the next four hours (yes/no plus one word)
- Maximum risk in currency for today
- One sentence bias from the daily alone
If line five takes more than one sentence, your bias is not clear enough to proceed to the one-hour chart.
Timing the routine
Allow twenty-five minutes for a liquid FX pair you know well; forty minutes when studying a new equity. Set a kitchen timer. When it rings, the sheet is done — incomplete sections mean "no trade" for that instrument today.
Participants in our intensive often batch three sheets on Sunday evening for the week's focus list, then update only the one-hour band each morning. That split keeps weekend analysis from bleeding into Monday's open panic.
Common shortcuts to avoid
- Colouring every moving average instead of marking structure
- Copying someone else's levels from a chat room without verifying on your charts
- Filling the one-hour panel before the daily bias line is written
The sheet is personal. Share photos with your coach or study group, but do not treat another trader's markup as a signal.
Downloadable structure
Our workshop fee includes a pad of pre-printed sheets. If you are preparing remotely, any graph-paper notebook with three ruled sections works. Consistency matters more than branding — use the same layout for at least twenty sessions before redesigning it.