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Pre-Trade Quality Gate

Checklist-first entries to reduce forced trades

Many traders report taking trades that "aren't really their setup" during quiet periods. This forces a short checklist before any order template is generated.

House RecipePersonal4 min setup

INGREDIENTS

🔔Notifications📄Google Docs

PROMPT

Create "Pre-Trade Quality Gate": before any entry suggestion, ask me a 5-question checklist (playbook alignment, defined invalidation, risk-based sizing, liquidity/spread check, time-window check). If any answer is "no", recommend skipping. If all "yes", require a setup tag and open a journal stub.

Pain point

Forced trades often happen when the trader skips their own criteria and trades "because something is moving."

Triggers

  • Any new trade-entry attempt

Conditions

  • Skip checklist only for pre-defined "playbook" templates (optional)
  • Optional: require checklist only after the first 2 trades (to reduce friction early)

Actions

  • Ask 5 yes/no questions; if any are "no," recommend skipping
  • If proceeding, require selecting a setup tag (ORB, pullback, mean reversion, etc.)
  • Create a journal stub automatically

Parameters (defaults)

  • questions:
  • "Is this an A/B setup from my playbook?"
  • "Is my invalidation level defined?"
  • "Is size derived from risk (not emotion)?"
  • "Is liquidity/spread acceptable?"
  • "Am I trading in my allowed time window?"
  • requireSetupTag: true

Examples

  • If you can't define invalidation, the recipe recommends "no trade" and starts a watch-only alert.
  • If spread is above limit, it blocks market orders and suggests limit-entry only.
Tags:#trading#process#discipline#journaling