Bharath Shiksha

Research Desk · Edition I

The Pre-Trade Checklist.

Ten questions every trader must answer before placing any order. A 14-page working document derived from institutional trading-desk practice, adapted for Indian retail participants. Designed to be printed and kept beside the screen.

Inside the Document

The ten questions, in order.

Each question appears on its own page inside the PDF, with a one-paragraph explanation of why it matters, specific instructions for answering it, and a named failure mode that the question is designed to guard against. A pull-out summary page is included for print use.

Read the chart before the order

  1. Have I identified the market regime on the higher timeframe?
  2. Have I marked the specific levels this trade depends on?
  3. Is my entry trigger a specific event, not a general feeling?
  4. Is my stop loss placed where the thesis is invalidated, not where it is convenient?
  5. Have I calculated position size using the risk-per-trade rule from the stop distance?

Confirm before execution

  1. Is the reward-to-risk ratio at least two-to-one, before costs?
  2. Does the entry timeframe bias align with the higher timeframe regime?
  3. Are there scheduled events in the next thirty minutes that can invalidate this read?
  4. Have I completed the pre-trade entry in my trade journal?
  5. Am I trading the plan or trading a feeling?

Download the PDF.

Free. Fourteen pages. A4 portrait, print-ready. Enter your email to access the download link. We will send the PDF to the same address so you can forward it to yourself or a trading partner.

What the Document Argues

A checklist is defensive architecture, not paperwork.

The problem this document solves is not a knowledge problem. Most retail traders already know what a well-constructed trade looks like. The gap between knowing and doing is what a written pre-trade checklist is built to close.

What it catches

Setups that pass on one timeframe but fail on the one that decides the trade.

The first three questions are designed to force a structural read before any entry-timeframe signal is acted on. Most retail losses originate here: a valid five-minute trigger taken against an unread four-hour regime.

What it prevents

Oversizing, convenience-stops, and one-to-one reward-risk.

Questions four to six are the arithmetic of survivability. A correctly sized loss at a structural stop with a two-to-one target profile is the only combination that tolerates a realistic win rate across a sample of trades.

What it exposes

The emotional state the rest of the checklist cannot see.

Questions nine and ten audit the trader, not the chart. A journal entry completed before the order is placed, and an honest read of the emotional input, are the two steps most often skipped and the two whose omission most reliably predicts stagnation.

Next Step

The checklist is the shortest working document we publish. The six-stage curriculum is the long one.

See the six stages Read the curriculum