To be a successful trader it’s important to get some kind of routine together to ensure you get your fundamentals right at the start of each day.

Pic: koalazymonkey

For example, every morning the first thing I do before I even look at price charts is to check what news is coming out during my trading session. I look for the high and medium impact news announcments. I’ll often set up alarms using my phone to remind me 10 minutes before the news comes out. I also make sure I have my Twitter client open ensuring I don’t miss my own scheduled tweets that alert my followers 30 minutes prior to each news announcement.

The second, and most important, action of the day is to check the market flow. I personally only trade one pair – EUR/USD – so I only need to do this once. Knowing the direction of the market, or bias, is crucial to choose whether you’ll be looking for long or short opportunities. Jarratt has a great video within LiveConnect on how to determine market flow.

Once I’ve figured out the direction I’ll be checking price action for clues as to where price might go. For example, whether price is near levels of previous support or resistance or if market flow is close to reversing.

Then I’ll plot my fibonacci line and look for points to trade from according to the bias for the day. That’s when I set my orders and wait for them to be filled.

Trading in this way ensures I have a hassle-free start to the trading day and helps me to be confident that the trades I’m taking are low risk and high reward, just like I was taught.